THE MEDIA WON'T NEED AYERS NOW --- NOW YOU WILL DEFINITELY BE LABELED A TERRORIST -- KISS YOUR LEAD GOODBYE
I KNOW MCCAIN IS A LIAR --- MY PROBLEM IS I THINK YOU ARE ALSO ...
I AM NOT VOTING FOR ANYONE. WHAT DIFFERENCE DOES IT MAKE? NOBODY IN THE COUNTRY CAN RUN A WAR, AN ECONOMY OR AN ELECTION . ACORN ANYONE ?
By Jim Popkin, NBC News Senior Investigative Producer
“Would a campaign staffer have attended if they were aware of the complete list of attendees? No,” said Obama spokesman Ben LaBolt in an email statement to NBC.
The Muslim outreach meetingOn September 15, newly named Muslim outreach director Minha Husaini spoke to a small group of Muslim leaders and potential Obama supporters at a hotel in Springfield, Virginia, several meeting participants and the campaign said. Two other Obama-affiliated Democratic Party workers joined Husaini and also spoke to the crowd. Some Virginia and Washington, D.C.-based Muslim activists and interested citizens attended, and flyers were passed out from “Arab Americans for Obama” stating Sen. Obama’s goals for achieving peace in the Middle East, protecting the civil liberties of Arab Americans and ending the war in Iraq.
Several participants told NBC News that Husaini and other speakers delivered a standard Obama campaign pitch. “They said, ‘We’re here to get the concerns of Muslim voters and let everyone know that the Obama campaign does want the support of the Muslim community,’ ” recalled one participant, who requested anonymity. The meeting was not advertised and some attendees got text phone messages notifying them that day of the meeting’s location, the participant said.
Nearly a month later, the meeting is drawing controversy--and not because of anything said at the meeting itself.
The attendeesOne meeting attendee was Mahdi Bray of the Muslim American Society, several of the participants said. The MAS website describes Bray as an imam and “long time civil and human rights activist.” Bray’s critics say he has a history of defending terrorists. They point to a video of Bray at a rally in 2000, for example, in which he can be seen pumping his fist in the air in support of the terrorist groups Hamas and Hezbollah. In a 2004 interview, he called the Israeli assassination of a Hamas spiritual leader an “unlawful, cowardly and dangerous act of state-sponsored terrorism.” Bray did not return a call requesting comment.
Also attending the meeting was Nihad Awad, executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations. CAIR is a Muslim-American civil rights group that has, as its website states, “consistently and persistently condemned terrorism and the killing of innocent civilians.” Nonetheless, the group has many critics, especially in law-enforcement circles, and is an unindicted co-conspirator in the Holy Land Foundation terrorism financing case.
In an interview on Thursday, CAIR spokesman Ibrahim Hooper said that the group has filed a legal brief seeking to have its name removed from the list of unindicted co-conspirators in the federal terror case. “Obviously we see it as politically motivated and a cheap way to stigmatize” CAIR and other Muslim groups, Hooper said.
Hooper said that CAIR has consistently condemned “every act of terrorism” by groups including Hamas and Hezbollah. But he would not answer whether CAIR condemns those designated terrorist groups themselves. “I’ve already answered your questions,” he said, and abruptly ended the interview. Nihad Awad, the executive director, did not return a call seeking comment.
"Political liability"A second meeting participant speaking on condition on anonymity said he was stunned to learn that Awad and Bray had been invited to an event where Obama representatives would be present. The participant said Awad and Bray are considered politically “radioactive.” He said that some in the Obama group knew ahead of time that top CAIR officials would be in attendance--an allegation the Obama campaign disputes.
“Yes, when I knew they were coming it made me uncomfortable,” the attendee said. “There was some hope it wouldn’t get out” into the media, the attendee added. “There was some concern within the Obama camp that some of these people coming may be a political liability.”
Chicago-based lawyer Mazen Asbahi also attended the meeting. He is the Obama campaign’s former Muslim outreach coordinator, who abruptly resigned in August after the Wall Street Journal and websites that track fundamentalist Islam began questioning Asbahi’s involvement in an Islamic investment fund and various Islamic groups. When reached by NBC News, Asbahi would not comment about the September gathering or his brief stint eight years ago on an investment fund board which also included a fundamentalist imam.
When informed that Asbahi had attended the recent meeting, an Obama spokesman said: “Mazen Asbahi resigned from his role as the campaign’s Muslim American outreach coordinator and was replaced--he is not an employee of the campaign and does not speak on behalf of the campaign.”
The Obama campaign has been delicately trying to court Muslim American voters in key battleground states while simultaneously knocking down Internet rumors that attempt to link the presidential candidate to radical Islam. Sen. Obama is a Christian. **** PRETTY F'ING STUPID OBAMA*** DID YOU NOT LEARN ANYTHING AT HARVARD ?
Obama campaign reactionThe Obama campaign would not allow NBC News to interview its Muslim outreach director, Minha Husaini. It issued a statement explaining that she was not a meeting organizer. “Our campaign has an interfaith outreach organization that is equipping people of faith with the tools they need to educate their friends and family members about Senator Obama’s plans to bring the change we need,” the statement said. “This meeting was not organized by the campaign--our outreach staff attends many meetings in the course of each day, and they accepted an invitation from community leaders to attend
YOu know Graam -- the man that called us "whiners". He is McCain's economic brain. Now, consider he was very involved in the ENRON nightmare. He was the architect of deregulation that led to subprime mortgages and the current abject failure of banks and investment banks, hence the credit problem, the housing/mortgage issues that are killing this country. If you think this is bad -- you've seen nothing yet. The man who admits he doesn't know anything about the economy has a main economic advisor (who has given us the current crisis). Expect not more of the same, expect devastating events economically if McCain win. I mean devastating.
Greenspan said today this is the worse economy in his life. And he is a Republican.
in financial markets that led to the disasters in housing/credit/banking crisis
WHO WILL COST OBAMA THIS ELECTION .. IF YOU ACTUALLY READ MY BLOG YOU MIGHT LEARN SOMETHING . Well, that assumes you can read which is quite a reach for you I suspect.
YOu read 1 post and didn't bother to read the rest which supported Obama. But thanks to the HATE speech on this blog I will vote 3rd party. No worries I am sure you think you can win without me, it's the millions of others like me that will be challenge for you ...
I've never heard so much happy hope talk from people who are basically nasty.
Be sure they understand if they have health care now through their employer, McCain will consider that taxable income. Then for a family they will give you 5,000 rebate. Do the math. If you pay 14,000 a year for a family for healthcare how does this help you ? For a single person the rebate is 2500.
This war is twice as long as WWII and we have not one thing to show for it
If you agree cotact your representatives in Congress and the Senate
A new group financed by a Texas billionaire and organized by some of the same political operatives and donors behind the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth campaign against Sen. John F. Kerry in 2004 plans to begin running television ads attacking Barack Obama, a signal that outside groups may play a larger role than anticipated in the closing days of the presidential race.
The American Issues Project has amassed a multimillion-dollar fund, and the group is putting the final touches on an eleventh-hour campaign targeting the Democratic presidential nominee, sources said.
"We expect to be doing both issues and express advocacy between now and November and beyond," said Christian Pinkston, a spokesman for the group.
The effort could mark a sharp turn in what has been an unusually quiet year for outside political groups. At this point in 2004, such groups had already spent about $100 million dollars on television commercials attacking Kerry (D-Mass.) and President Bush, but they have devoted $8 million to ads so far in this election cycle.
The resurgence on the right appears as though it will not go unanswered. The Service Employees International Union is set to unveil a multimillion-dollar television campaign on Monday, and other liberal and Democratic-aligned groups are rushing to establish financing for efforts over the final weeks of the campaign.
At the outset of the general election, both Obama and Republican nominee John McCain called on outside groups to stay on the sidelines, hoping to steer funds to their own campaigns and party committees. Several initial attempts to organize independent groups for the 2008 presidential contest fizzled early on. But as the back and forth has grown more intense in recent weeks, both campaigns have signaled that their opposition to such efforts is softening.
AIP emerged on the scene in August, airing controversial anti-Obama ads in four battleground states -- Virginia, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Michigan -- that sought to raise questions about his ties to William Ayers, a member of the Vietnam War-era radical group known as the Weathermen. The ad was sponsored entirely -- at a cost of more than $2 million -- by Harold Simmons, a Dallas-based businessman who also helped fund the Swift boat activities four years ago.
The new group was launched by Chris LaCivita, who was intimately involved in the Swift boat campaign, and Tony Feather, one of the co-founders of Progress for America, which spent tens of millions backing Bush in 2004.
According to sources familiar with AIP, it has secured significant financial backing from a handful of major donors and is planning more ads like the Ayers commercial in the weeks between now and Election Day.
Four years ago, mid-September might have been too late to organize for November. But the rules for outside groups changed after a recent Supreme Court opinion that loosened restrictions on corporate and union electioneering within 60 days of the general election. That enabled groups such as AIP, which is organized as a nonprofit corporation, more leeway to launch last-minute attack ads.
On the Democratic side, much of that effort appears to be falling to labor unions and a handful of well-known advocacy groups such as MoveOn.org and the Sierra Club. In the spring, a coalition of liberal groups that included the AFL-CIO announced plans to spend $350 million on political activities during the 2008 campaign season, but they have been slow in coming together.
Ilyse Hogue, the campaign director for MoveOn.org confirmed that the group will spearhead an ad campaign focused on what has emerged as the central theme of the fall campaign, the question of which candidate is better equipped to bring change to Washington.
"The fight is over whose plan for change is real, whose is genuine. And we're looking to put that in front of voters," Hogue said. "When you look at McCain and [GOP vice presidential nominee Sarah] Palin's ties to Big Oil, it doesn't pass the laugh test that they are for change."
Having spent recent elections watching conservative groups bombard Democratic candidates by taking a disciplined message to the television and talk radio airwaves, the leaders of several major left-leaning groups said they are ready to answer back.
"After years of watching the other side do this, it's finally something we've really gotten strong at," Hogue said.
But Republicans appear to have a head start. In April, Simmons, a corporate tycoon who had spent heavily on the Swift boat campaign, began holding meetings with other Swift boat donors to discuss renewing their effort for 2008-- meetings that included input from Bush's former strategist, Karl Rove.
At one of the meetings, Simmons presented his plans to oilman T. Boone Pickens, another financier of the Swift boat efforts, at a gathering in Simmons's Dallas office, Pickens said. Pickens ultimately chose not to get involved but said several others decided to forge ahead. Rove is not directly involved in the American Issues Project but has provided advice to a group targeting Democratic candidates for the Senate and House, known as Freedom's Watch.
These people never cease to amaze me !!! What will they think of next ??? They have far too much free time. Their minds are like jello . Wiggle Wiggle -------OHHHHHHH wow -- a terrorist LOL
Then we have THEIR candidate ------if ONLY he could fist bump we could possibly get over his errr MEMORY issues ....
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GEtZlR3zp4c
Obama does not get credit for what he has done .
Let's leave racial barrier out for a minute:
Determined early on you win by delegates -- Primaries are not general elections
Played by the rules -- re Mi and Fl
Had zero drama inside his campaign --they just move seamlessly from one contest to the next
Came from being virtually unheard of on a national scale
Beat the "inevitable" candidate
Is McCain unaware of YOUTUBE ??? lololol .. He is getting caughty in so many lies. He does not realize that everything he says is then YOUTUBE ??
First he was praising Hillary and rough the media was on her etc .. then now he says he NEVER SAID IT.!!! LOL he has way too many senior moments for me ..
I think this has been successful for millions of reasons -- each person doing whaever they do and doing it well . You do not come this far alone. Senator Obama knows this very well. You come this far for the mission not for the individual person. The mission is bigger than any one person. This time, is it about the mission.
I am truly blown away by what each peson on this team has accomplished.
Everyone needs to calm down and take a breath an relax. To vote for McCain is to hurt yourselves !! Hillary will be just fine ! But will you ?? Watch this video and if you really want this man .. go ahead ......... just don't be complaining about an endless war, endless recession and double digit inflation ..
