Newsmax believes unrounded amount campaign contribs = SHADY TERRORIST MONEY

[NYCGirl]

http://obsidianwings.blogs.com/obsidian_wings/2008/10/newsmax-not-awa.html

Ken Timmerman has a rather breathless article in NewsMax called "Obama’s Secret Campaign Cash: Has $63 Million Flowed from Foreign Sources?" Here's the argument for the claim that it could have: Examining Obama's donations over $200, which must be itemized in FEC filings, the author discovers a class of donations that strikes him as suspicious. He calculates the proportion of the itemized donations that are of this suspicious kind, and then figures out how much money would be similarly suspect if that proportion also held in the non-itemized donations, the ones for less that $200. Answer: $63 million.

You might be wondering: what are these suspicious donations? They are donations for amounts like $20.01, or $150.04 -- donations that are not rounded to the nearest dollar:

"In all, Newsmax found an astonishing 37,265 unique donors to the Obama campaign whose contributions were not rounded up to dollar amounts. That amounts to more than 10 percent of the total number of unique donors whose names have been disclosed by the Obama campaign to the public. (...)

Campaign finance experts find the frequent appearance of unrounded contributions suspicious, since contributors almost invariably give in whole dollar amounts.

One expert in campaign finance irregularities offers a possible explanation.

"Of course this is odd. They are obviously converting from local currency to U.S. dollars," said Ken Boehm, the chairman of the National Legal and Policy Center."

And that, gentle reader, is why Timmerman thinks that $63 million of Obama's contributions might be from foreigners: because the last two digits are something other than .00. Apparently, Neither Ken Boehm nor Timmerman knows about this:

MORE AT LINK EXPLAINING INTERNET TRADITIONS

[Paulie]

1. There is also the processor fee for handling the transaction.

Amex/MC/Visa giving away their fee out of the kindness of their hearts?

[angstlessk]

3. that too!

[angstlessk]

2. Those are Bank of America donars...for every extra cent,.,they round up to the next dollar amount

AND MATCH that amount and put it in your savings account...I was told..when you get gas always get say 20.01 it will be rounded up to 21.00 the extra .99 put into your savings and BOA matches it with .99..great deal if you ask me!

[Darkhawk32]

16. I do the "Keep the Change" thing... the 100% match is for the first 3 months.

Just saying.

[southpaw]

4. Newsmax also believes G. W. Bush is the second greatest president in history

right behind Ronald Reagan.

Go figure.

[guitar man]

5. Newsmax might be fit to wipe with

if you print it out on soft enough paper. ;)

[shadowknows69]

6. How long until they start seeing the terrorists in their own mirrors?

[onethatcares]

7. ok, ok, I have to admit.

It was me that gave Obama 63 Million dollars in unmarked American currency. I found it on the street and thinking it was part of the cash that disappeared from the Iraq Provisional Authority, figured it could help a brother out. I just deposited it all in my checking account and every now and then mailed off a check for an insane number, like 37.42, or 146.97 or 76.43. Sometimes I just used the numbers that paid out on the lottery. Somebody better call newsmax and tell them it's solved.

[NYCGirl]

8. So it was you?

:rofl:

[annabanana]

9. So when I gave $17.76 for the sake of the Nation I was coverting

from some terrorist currency?? Who knew!

[Doctor Cynic]

11. Or if you give $9.11 to Giuliani's non-campaign.

[Frumious B]

10. I gave $21.18 when Obama went over the top in delegates.

I guess Smyrna, GA is far more exotic and foreign than I had realized.

[LynnTheDem]

12. newsmax also believed Iraq did 911, had "wmd" that "we found em"

etc etc etc etc etc etc...

[upi402]

13. Newsmax is the nastiest spam I get n/t

[Allyoop]

14. $20.08

They're too dense to realize that small number donors might just like to add 08 to 20 in 2008?

[Darkhawk32]

15. Usually the $.04 part is symbolic.

"I support Howard Dean's 50-state strategy, so I'm adding an extra 50 cents."

I've seen it many times here.