The Soros Web and the Spiders Within
Ed Lasky
American Thinker
10/11/2010
Barack Obama’s latest straw-man style of attack is focused on the United States Chamber of Commerce. The Chamber has earned his ire by being a free-enterprise group, and one that is practicing its First Amendment rights to criticize an administration bereft of officials with real-world experience but chockablock with animus toward capitalism. Obama’s latest claim is that the ads run by the Chamber are funded by foreign sources.
Who is helping perpetuating this claim — for which there is no evidence? George Soros: Obama’s pal and donor, and a man who wielded his power over his “527” groups [(Soros is the single largest funder of such groups] to help power Obama to the Oval Office.
The New York Times charts the path of the “foreign money” charge:
The issue of the chamber’s funding first gained notice this week when ThinkProgress, a blog affiliated with the Center for American Progress, an influential liberal advocacy group, posted a lengthy piece with the headline “Exclusive: Foreign-Funded ‘U.S.’ Chamber of Commerce Running Partisan Attack Ads.”
The piece detailed the chamber’s overseas memberships, but it provided no evidence that the money generated overseas had been used in United States campaigns. Still, liberal groups like MoveOn.org pounced on the allegations, resulting in protests at the chamber’s offices, a demand for a federal investigation by Senator Al Franken, Democrat of Minnesota, and ultimately the remarks by Mr. Obama himself.
White House officials acknowledged Friday that they had no specific evidence to indicate that the chamber had used money from foreign entities to finance political attack ads.
Soros is pulling the strings of his puppets — again…
…President Obama ranted and raved about the Chamber and the influence of foreign money in American politics. George Soros and Barack Obama have a long history together. Soros was an early and ardent supporter of Senator Barack Obama — even finding a loophole in campaign finance laws that allowed him and Soros family members to escape the limits that normally apply in terms of donor giving. They flooded Obama with money, a topic I covered in an article I wrote for American Thinker back in early 2007 (“Soros, Obama and the Millionaires Exception“).
The canard being promoted by Obama and George Soros has no basis in fact, as the New York Times makes clear…
…The entire campaign is dishonest in the extreme. Michael Barone calls it “projection” because Obama’s own 2008 campaign all but invited foreign donations:
… it’s well documented that the 2008 Obama campaign did not put in place address verification software that would have routinely prevented most foreign donations. In effect they were encouraging donations by foreign nationals…
Read the complete post at American Thinker.
Update: Michelle Malkin writes, Newly nativist Democrats and their own foreign funny money
The Obama White House has been an echo chamber for the Soros-funded Center for American Progress from Day One — from bashing Fox News, attacking talk radio, and pimping “media justice” and the Orwellian Fairness Doctrine, to crusading for the government health care takeover usingAstroturfed doctors and taxpayer-funded operatives installed in the health care bureaucracy.
Team Obama has gotten away with its left-wing myna bird routine. Until now.
Mimicking the Center for American Progress attacks on the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the Soros suck-up-in-chief himself accused Republicans last week of benefiting from “money from foreign corporations” — which liberals claim the U.S. Chamber of Commerce is funneling into political ads. Democrat clown prince Al Franken is leading a Senate inquisition against the Chamber. Endangered Democrat candidates across the country are dutifully parroting the line…
…GOP candidates who face this ridiculous onslaught must remind voters of all the shady foreign cash that the Democrats and their deep-pocketed donors have pumped into the political system. Strike back twice as hard…
You MUST read Malkin’s article. She knocks this non-issue right out of the ballpark!
Update 2: At American Power, Obama’s Hypocrisy, Obama’s Fraud.
Just before the 2008 election I published an essay on campaign finance at Pajamas Media, “Obama’s Fundraising Fraud.” No candidate in American history has raised more money for a presidential bid than Barack Obama. Great story, but what’s normally stuffed under the rug is the massive amounts of money that were funneled to the campaign through illegal sources. This was widely documented at the time, but the MFM largely ignored the scandal (WaPo was the major exception). But now there’s the new convenient outrage on the left over alleged foreign sources of campaign influence. Michelle has been reporting on this, “Newly nativist Democrats and their own foreign funny money.” And also William Jacobson, “Obama Was Right About Xenophobic Bitter Clingers.”
And Sister Toldjah caps it off with more on the left’s blatant hypocrisy: “Barack Obama: so hypocritical, it’s almost grotesque.”
Forget whether the charge is correct or not. Ignore the fact that this is a desperate, xenophobic smear job by a party facing a massacre at the polls.
It’s the hypocrisy that’s jaw-dropping, given that Obama’s own presidential campaign winked at foreign money…
Update 3: via Weasel Zippers, Foreign-Connected PACs Have Donated More to Dems Than Republicans. Note to David Axelrod: Is this really an argument you want to be picking?…Foreign-connected PACs– OpenSecrets.org
And, in another article at Weasel Zippers, these links: October 29, 2008: Obama Accepting Untraceable Donations; October 23, 2008: BarackObama.com’s Lax Security Opens Door to Online Donor Fraud; October 23, 2008: Donor Patrol: Obama’s Online Site Accepts More Fakes
