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I keep hearing about how people are starved for loans, and that we'll have a credit freeze if the bailout passes. However, I bought a new car yesterday evening, and I was able to get quick financing from Honda. I therefore submit unto you all this question: are you or anybody you know having trouble getting a loan?

On the night of Sept. 16, Barack Obama will not be in Cincinnati, Ohio, or Lebanon, Va., or Grand Rapids, Mich., or any of the other swingiest regions of the swingiest swing states. Instead, the Democratic presidential nominee will start his evening at a 46,000 square-foot mansion in Beverly Hills, then proceed to the posh Beverly Wilshire hotel, where rooms start at $495 a night. Needless to say, Obama won't be prospecting for votes in the Golden State, where he currenty leads Republican rival John McCain by an insurmountable 15-point margin. He'll be mining for money. It wasn't supposed to...

Obama’s Creative Campaign Financing Adds Misuse of Tax Exempt Church Resources At a time when money from Washington lobbyists and special interests is polluting the political process more than ever, the question for campaigns isn’t just whether they can compete financially — it’s how they do it. Obama campaign manager David Plouffe, E-mail of June 12 2007 We should indeed look at “how they do it” because this E-mail itself may have been an illegal lottery. Furthermore, one of last year’s “Dinner with Barack” lotteries announced a winner before the entry deadline, which suggests that not all participants had an...

The following unsolicited bulk E-mail from Obama for America demonstrates Obama’s total contempt for the intelligence of the American voter by claiming that Obama is rejecting Federal election funding out of an idealistic desire to fix a “broken” campaign system. The truth is that his rejection of Federal funding frees him to accept unlimited six figure bundled contributions such as those enumerated below, without any limit on what he can spend to get elected. Since we announced our decision not to accept taxpayer funds for the general election, tens of thousands of people like you have come forward to declare...

Quasi-fiscal scoundrels 4: helping banks When I hear or read the words ‘off-balance-sheet financing’ or ’special purpose vehicle’, warning lights begin to flash and I grab for my obfuscatometer. Off-balance-sheet financing is any form of funding that avoids placing the owners’ equity, liabilities or assets on the balance sheet of a firm or other legal entity. The most common way to achieve this is by placing those items on some other entity’s balance sheet. A standard approach is to create a special purpose vehicle (SPV) and place assets and liabilities on its balance sheet. An SPV is a firm or...

Democratic Party officials want a federal judge to order an investigation into whether Sen. John McCain violated election laws by withdrawing from public financing, saying federal regulators are too weak to act on their own. A lawsuit against the Federal Election Commission, to be filed Monday in U.S. District Court, questions the agency's ability to enforce the law and review McCain's decision to opt out of the system. The Republican presidential candidate, who had been entitled to $5.8 million in federal funds for the primary campaign, decided earlier this year to give up that money so he could avoid strict...

<p>As Marc Ambinder reports, the McCain campaign raised only $4 million online and through direct mail. Barack Obama, meanwhile, has over 1.3 million donors, a number that will surely increase if he wins the Democratic nomination. So far, McCain has caught a lucky break.</p>

The Democratic National Committee (DNC) will file a complaint against Sen. John McCain (Ariz.) with the Federal Election Commission (FEC) Monday, charging that the presumptive Republican presidential nominee is breaking the law by trying to get out of a public financing agreement. In a Sunday afternoon conference call with reporters, DNC chairman Howard Dean said McCain's attempt to withdraw from a loan agreement that hinged on an acceptance of public financing speaks directly to McCain's "integrity." "This is a classic example of someone who talks one way and does another when it benefits him," Dean said. On the call, Dean...

Barack Obama has made a historic presidential run this cycle primarily on the basis of changing the political culture in Washington. His unbelievable success has ironically set a trap for a potential general-election run. Obama has to choose now between keeping his word, or conveniently breaking it and exposing himself as just another self-serving politician: A year ago, at the beginning of his bid to secure the clean-up-Washington mantle, Barack Obama made a pact with John McCain that, if the two were to be their party's nominees, each would accept public financing for the general election. That agreement sounded far-fetched:...

Last Sunday's Million Mom March, the gun-control protest organized (as the major media is finally admitting) by the sister-in-law of Hillary Clinton's longtime lawyer pal and hatchet woman, surly Susan Thomases, may not do the Democrats much good this year. ...It doesn't take a weatherman to figure out that the average citizen doesn't want national policy determined by packs of weeping women led by a shrill, dimwitted talk-show host (Hillary sycophant Rosie O'Donnell).

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DONORS WHOSE addresses turn out to be tenements. Dishwashers and waiters who write $1,000 checks. Immigrants who ante up because they have been instructed to by powerful neighborhood associations, or, as one said, "They informed us to go, so I went." Others who say they never made the contributions listed in their names or who were not eligible to give because they are not legal residents of the United States. This is the disturbingly familiar picture of Hillary Rodham Clinton's presidential campaign presented last week in a report by the Los Angeles Times about questionable fundraising by the New York...

Details of the reports are at the FEC link..... Hunter for President Inc. SUMMARY 5. Covering Period 04/01/2007 Through 06/30/2007 6. Cash on Hand at BEGINNING of the Reporting Period   272,552.19 7. Total Receipts This Period   814,417.18 8. Subtotal (6 + 7)   1,086,969.37 9. Total Disbursements This Period   874,042.48 10. Cash on Hand at CLOSE of the Reporting Period   212,926.89 11. Debts and Obligations Owed TO the Committee   0.00     Itemize all on SCHEDULE C or SCHEDULE D 12. Debts and Obligations Owed BY the Committee   0.00     Itemize all on SCHEDULE C...

The organizer of the Million Mom March scheduled to take place in Washington, D.C., this Sunday, Mother's Day, is the sister-in-law of first lady Hillary Clinton's closest friend and political advisor and has served as publicist for CBS News anchor Dan Rather. As reported by columnist Tony Blankley in yesterday's Washington Times, virtually all major media coverage of march organizer Donna Dees-Thomasas has failed to disclose that she is the sister-in-law of Susan Thomasas, Mrs. Clinton's chief political advisor and close friend."To deny the readers (and viewers) such necessary -- and available -- information is to breach ... the moral...

Hello, Mr. & Mrs. Joe Six-pack. My name is Kerry and I’m writing on behalf of the Kerry For Elected Office Committee. You may not know this but there are evil forces at work in America. They’ve infiltrated our government at all levels. And they want to take away your favorite government program. They want to cut the money for your children’s schools. They want your parents to lose their homes. They want to pollute the air, the water and the soils of Earth and any other planets we can get to in the universe. These people are so evil...

While I disagree with some of the material in this book as well as some of the sourcing I do recommend it for those interested in understanding terrorism. It deals with the money flow that is at the heart of modern terrorism whether it is narco-terrorism or Islamic terrorism. It is complementary to The Looming Tower and Jihad Incorporated. The author, "Loretta Napoleoni, a former Fulbright scholar at Johns Hopkins University's Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies and Rotary scholar at the London School of Economics, is an expert on international terrorism who has worked as an economist...

Hillary Clinton may not have killed it herself, but she delivered the coup de grace to public financing of presidential campaigns by refusing federal matching funds for both the primaries and the general election. The increasingly irrelevant fund had been on life support since the 2004 election, when both candidates eschewed its spending limits for private financing: The public financing system for presidential campaigns, a post-Watergate initiative hailed for decades as the best way to rid politics of the corrupting influence of money, may have quietly died over the weekend. Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York became the first...

IRAN SEEKS NEW TECHNOLOGY FROM N. KOREA LONDON [MENL] -- Iran has discussed additional missile technology and systems from North Korea. Western intelligence sources said an Iranian delegation has arrived in North Korea for talks on ballistic missile development. The sources said the delegation was comprised of senior officials authorized to acquire warhead and missile technology from Pyongyang. "North Korea has been testing nuclear warheads as well as new missiles," an intelligence source said. "Much of that development has been financed by Iran, which now wants the technology for its programs." The official North Korean news agency reported that the...

For the first time in its 103-year history, the Ford Motor Company is mortgaging its assets, including factories, equipment, office buildings, patents and trademarks, and stakes in subsidiaries like Volvo, in order to raise $18 billion to overhaul itself. The amount Ford is borrowing exceeds the total market value of all its outstanding stock by more than $2 billion. Although other auto companies have put up manufacturing equipment and other types of collateral over the years to secure loan, Ford has never done so before. For many decades, its credit was so good that it could easily borrow without pledging...

Korea not a Terrorist-Free Zone: Lawmaker A number of suspected Islamist extremists have turned up in Korea over the past few years, it emerged Tuesday. According to a report on terrorist activities by the National Intelligence Service submitted to Uri Party Lawmaker Won Hye-young, one foreigner who was allegedly in contact with violent Islamist organizations in the former Soviet Union entered the country on a fake passport in November 2002 and worked for a small firm here before being rumbled and deported. Nizar Nawar, the principal perpetrator of an April, 2002 suicide bombing at a synagogue in Tunisia, also lived...

Saddam's Wife, Daughter on Wanted List Saddam's Wife and Daughter, New Leader of al-Qaida in Iraq Among 41 on Iraq's Most-Wanted List By BUSHRA JUHI The Associated Press BAGHDAD, Iraq - Saddam Hussein's wife and eldest daughter are among 41 people on the Iraqi government's most wanted list, along with the new leader of al-Qaida in Iraq, a top official announced Sunday. The photo of the daughter of former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein, Raghad, is seen on the Iraq government's new list of wanted outlaws at a press conference, Sunday, July 2, 2006,in Baghdad, Iraq. Iraqi National Security Advisor Dr....

MANY READERS have been sharply critical of our decision to publish an article Friday on the U.S. Treasury Department's program to secretly monitor worldwide money transfers in an effort to track terrorist financing. They have sent me sincere and powerful expressions of their disappointment in our newspaper, and they deserve an equally thoughtful and honest response. The decision to publish this article was not one we took lightly. We considered very seriously the government's assertion that these disclosures could cause difficulties for counterterrorism programs. And we weighed that assertion against the fact that there is an intense and ongoing public...

ST. PAUL, Minn. (AP) -- The Minnesota House gave the Twins stadium hopes a big lift Wednesday, voting 76-55 in favor of an open-air ballpark that would be paid for mostly by taxpayers. The focus now shifts to the state Senate, where the proposed increase in the county's sales tax could run into some early trouble. The Senate Taxes Committee, headed by a lawmaker opposed to the plan, will begin its deliberations on Thursday. The downtown Minneapolis stadium project would cost $522 million -- three-fourths from a higher Hennepin County sales tax -- and would allow the Twins to leave...

A high-priced fundraiser Monday night in Beverly Hills for Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger featured special guest Sen. John McCain of Arizona, whose appearance Democrats and some government watchdogs say skirted the federal campaign finance law he helped enact. McCain, the maverick Republican who once called Democratic Gov. Gray Davis' fundraising conduct "disgraceful,'' was the star attraction at an event that allowed guests who contributed or raised $100,000 or $50,000 to take photos with the governor and attend a private reception, according to the invitations. Some of the money was expected to go to Schwarzenegger's re-election campaign and some to the state...

Ostensibly the reasons were because some staff members of various Senators were unprepared, and need to devote their attention to the Harriet Miers hearings. But the hearing has not yet been rescheduled. Here and here are two recent articles I have written on Saudi Arabia that underscore the need for these hearings, and for passage of the Act.

Have some extra money? Air America scandal apologist Bill Press seems to be having trouble raising $2 million needed for his stalled syndicated talk show. Perhaps you can help. Is the former CNN "Crossfire" host and California Democratic Party chairman willing to take it from just about anybody? So far, he's raised just a quarter of the necessary amount, with funding from dubious sources. No wonder he was so quick to defend Air America in the midst of its sleazy scandal, it must have seemed a minor issue to the longtime Democrat operative....

The 2,000-mile U.S.-Mexico border is a pure disconnect, at least in terms of transportation. Both countries have highway routes designed long before the possibility that the economies of the two nations would someday integrate under a North American Free Trade Agreement. The result is that NAFTA land trade must zigzag through obstacle courses as raw materials and components go to factories and final products are shipped to markets. The best-positioned border-crossing ports, such as Laredo, are overcrowded. The others are underused. The governments of both nations understand the competitive necessity to build better highway connections. The cost is prohibitive, however,...

Disrupting financial support for the insurgency is a key element in the overall strategy to defeat terrorists in Iraq, and the U.S. government is pursuing several initiatives to track and limit the flow of funds, Defense Department officials told two congressional subcommittees here July 28. Daniel Glaser, assistant secretary for terrorist financing and financial crimes; James Roberts, acting deputy assistant secretary for special operations and combating terrorism; and Caleb Temple, operations director for the Defense Intelligence Agency's Joint Intelligence Task Force for Combating Terrorism, outlined the sources of insurgency funding sources and efforts being made to stop that funding. The...

In the wake of recent bombings in London and Egypt confirming the vulnerability of even relatively vigilant societies to Islamofascist terrorism, the question occurs: Are we serious about fighting this menace with every instrument at our disposal? A test of the seriousness of the U.S. Senate will be offered as soon as today [July 26]. Senators will be asked to choose between two amendments to the defense authorization bill (S.1042) bearing on one of this country's most powerful and yet largely unutilized tools: Denying U.S. investment capital, technology and other commercial benefits to state-sponsors of terror. To be sure, successive...

U.S. House freshmen are depending much more on political action committees to fuel their re-election campaigns. In the first quarter of this year, 43 percent of the newcomers' re-election campaign dollars came from PACs, a 15 percent increase from when they ran as non-incumbents, according to data collected by the Center for Responsive Politics. "More of the early money, raised particularly by freshmen, comes from PACs than it does from individuals," Steven Weiss, spokesperson for the Center for Responsive Politics (CRP), told Cybercast News Service. "That says that politicians are very reliant on PACs to receive an early boost in...

LOS ANGELES - Campaign donations made more than four years ago at a celebrity-studded Hollywood gala have led to a federal criminal trial against a former finance director for Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton that could hamper her future campaigns. The trial set to open Tuesday focuses on a lavish August 2000 political party at a tony Brentwood estate that drew dozens of A-list guests and performers, including Brad Pitt, Jennifer Aniston, Cher, Diana Ross and Muhammad Ali. Clinton hasn't been linked to charges that the cost of the event was vastly underreported, but Republicans will be watching for any ammunition...

While outsourcing of contact center and application services are relatively established, independent market analyst Datamonitor's ( DTM.L ) latest report on the subject " Global sourcing in European and North American Financial Services ," expects increasing performance in core financial services functions - such as mortgage processing, insurance underwriting, claims processing - to be outsourced to alternative offshore locations. "Offshoring of core competencies amongst financial services institutions in Europe and North America is increasing as confidence in the offshore markets - be it via vendor or an in-house offshore operations - is improving rapidly," says Anders Maehre, financial services Technology...

Back in July, the Justice Department held a bells-‘n-whistles press conference to announce a major case: a 42-count indictment, charging seven men and an ostensible charity with underwriting Hamas to the tune of nearly $60 million. Hamas, a ruthless terrorist organization dedicated to the annihilation of Israel and responsible for numerous gruesome attacks that have claimed the lives of hundreds of victims — including Americans — has been formally designated as a terrorist organization under various U.S. laws for many years. In announcing the indictment, then-Attorney General John Ashcroft could not have been more straightforward: “To those who exploit good...

SACRAMENTO – Of all the questions about California's ambitious plans to publicly finance human cloning projects for medical research, one of the thorniest may be how scientists plan to gather the thousands of eggs they'll need from women. It's an ethical dilemma that has made unlikely allies of Christian groups – who believe cloning immorally creates and destroys life in the name of science – and women's rights activists who fear that poor women will be exploited by commercial interests willing to pay thousands of dollars for human eggs produced by fertility drugs. The issue is not abstract. A small,...

Texas' highway capacity hardly is keeping up with the state's population and vehicle registration growth. The Texas Department of Transportation can't do much about that, since its budget increasingly must be devoted to maintaining current highways. The main plan to address long-term highway capacity is the Trans Texas Corridor. At 4,000 miles long and 1,200 feet wide, with a 50- to 100-year timetable and a $184 billion price tag, it is the biggest and most ambitious highway project since the U.S. interstate highway system was built almost half a century ago. It also is difficult to visualize, with so many...

Kuwaiti security forces combed the area after the clash A suspected Saudi militant has been killed and another gunman arrested in clashes with security forces in Kuwait. The firefight happened at Umm al-Haiman, near the border with Saudi Arabia, Kuwaiti television said. Kuwaiti forces have launched a search for up to six gunmen who escaped after the battle, in which at least two policemen were injured. It was the second shoot-out in Kuwait this week, with two policemen being shot dead in Kuwait City on Monday. The authorities have been hunting suspected militants since the shooting and have reportedly rounded...

(CNSNews.com) - A Chicago bank says it will begin selling its Islamic home-financing products to Freddie Mac -- one of the nation's largest investors in mortgages. The move will expand opportunities for Muslims to become homeowners without violating Islamic restrictions on paying interest, Devon Bank said in a press release.

Whatever happened to the "terminator" of special interests in Sacramento? "Dirty money," Arnold Schwarzenegger called big campaign contributions during his successful campaign for governor in the 2003 recall election: "The people of this state do not trust their government. They feel it is corrupted by dirty money, closed doors and back-room dealing." He was right, and he vowed to be different, scorning the "special interests" that give millions to state candidates in election years. "Game over," he declared. Even the skeptics who rolled their eyes wished it were true. Today, the game is still on. Schwarzenegger is California's champion campaign...

AMSTERDAM: Dutch authorities have launched an investigation into the financing of suspected terrorist organisations in the Netherlands. The probe by the Financial Expertise Centre (FEC), a body grouping officials from Dutch intelligence and the financial markets watchdog, follows a study launched in February into the risks of non-profit groups financing terrorism. The new investigation focuses on the financial affairs of charities with a religious background, Dutch daily De Volksrant reported, adding that the accounts of three Islamic foundations suspected of having financed terrorism had been blocked. A spokesman for the FEC — which also includes prosecutors, police and officials from...

The United States has concluded that Syria helped finance the Sunni insurgency in Iraq. Officials said the regime of President Bashar Assad used the state-owned Commercial Bank of Syria to relay hundreds of millions of dollars to Saddam Hussein loyalists in Iraq. They said the money has been deployed to finance the insurgency against the U.S.-led coalition primarily in Iraq's Sunni Triangle. The Commercial Bank of Syria held more than $1 billion in Saddam regime accounts on the eve of the U.S.-led war in Iraq in March 2003, officials said. Most of that money stemmed from Iraqi arms and...

While soldiers at the front prosecute the war on terrorism in Fallujah, those of us in the comfort of our U.S. offices and homes would do well to take a second look at that pre-election Osama bin Laden tape. Its election value now gone and never realized, the tape remains important for what it says about counterterrorism strategy. Bin Laden was aiming at a broader audience than American voters. He was addressing the wider Muslim world. Those who shape U.S. foreign policy should note how several of the points he's making with Muslims give insight into how the U.S. must...

http://www.globalterroralert.com/alibapirwamy.pdfhttp://www.globalterroralert.com"U.S. intelligence sources have indicated that Iraqi insurgent groups are being partly financed by large donations from Saudi-run Islamic charitable groups. An undated photo shows Ali Bapir, an Iraqi supporter of Ansar al-Islam detained by U.S. authorities, hosting an event in Iraq sponsored by the World Assembly of Muslim Youth (WAMY) of Jeddah, Saudi Arabia."

http://www.slobodan-milosevic.org/news/kerry101804.htm KERRY CAMPAIGN FINANCED BY TERRORISTS October 18, 2004 Written by: Andy Wilcoxson Introduction John Kerry, the Democratic presidential candidate, is being given money by an Albanian terrorist organization known as the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA or UCK in Albanian). The KLA is currently smuggling weapons into Kosovo as part of a plot to attack American and other UN peacekeepers, should the UN Security Counsel refuse their demand for Kosovo's secession from Serbia and Montenegro. About the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA/UCK) In order to fully understand the significance of John Kerry's involvement with the KLA it is first necessary to...

LONDON — The Bank of England (search) is ordering a freeze on any assets belonging to a terrorist group that claimed responsibility for kidnapping and beheading two Americans and a Briton in Iraq, Treasury chief Gordon Brown said Thursday. Brown told lawmakers in the House of Commons that he instructed the bank to direct all financial institutions in Britain to freeze any assets of the Tawhid and Jihad (search) group led by Jordanian Abu Musab al-Zarqawi (search). Excerpt: see the following link http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,135449,00.html

JOHANESSBURG, South Africa (AP) -- Members of Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida and other militants are turning increasingly to crime - from dealing drugs to selling knockoff shampoos and pirated CDs - to pay for attacks amid a crackdown on the movement of terrorist funds through world banks, security officials told The Associated Press. As terrorist cells become more self-reliant, they are calling into question the notion they need an international financial support network to stage attacks, according to the independent commission that investigated al-Qaida's deadliest assault yet on Sept. 11, 2001. U.S. Treasury officials, who have driven the global campaign...

<p>October 10, 2002 -- WASHINGTON - Former President Bill Clinton was showered with pricey gifts while he was in office from the leaders of Nigeria, Saudi Arabia and elsewhere, but he didn't disclose them because they were earmarked for his presidential library in Arkansas, a new report yesterday revealed.</p>

Authorities Conclude Switzerland Likely Used as Base for Financing, Logistical Support for 9/11 Attacks by Al-Qaida By Daniela Sigrist Associated Press Writer Published: Jun 24, 2004 BERN, Switzerland (AP) - Investigators have concluded that Switzerland was likely used as a base for financing and logistical support for the Sept. 11 attacks by al-Qaida, the country's attorney general said Thursday. Federal Prosecutor Valentin Roschacher said authorities plan to begin court proceedings in the coming weeks in three terror cases, capping investigations started four days after the 2001 suicide hijackings in New York and Washington. A special task force initially was charged...

ANAHEIM, Calif. - For years, Ray and Shahrazad Daneshi sought to buy a home, only to be told that they did not earn enough to qualify for a mortgage. But they recently managed to buy a small house in the shadow of Disneyland for $360,000 - six times their annual income - thanks to a lender who allowed them to borrow the entire value of the home, with no down payment. "We will not be going to any movies or eating out at restaurants," said Mr. Daneshi, a self-employed wedding photographer who came here from Iran in 1988. "But in...

Sen. John F. Kerry of Massachusetts has a long political career, distinguished by his willingness to go further left in politics and lower for money than most other American politicians would dream of going. He has been largely unnoticed outside the liberal Northeast and the approving pages of leftist magazines and newspapers. But now, with Kerry the victor in the Iowa caucuses and the New Hampshire primary, it's time for America to wake up and smell the Kerry. Who is this gaunt and haunted, French-looking apparition nicknamed "Ichabod" by his preppy classmates? And what could America expect from a John...

A secret report to the United Nations by French investigator Jean-Charles Brisard names seven prominent Saudi financiers of terror; the number matches the seven Saudis mentioned in a 11/26/02 Washington Post article, though it's not known if all the names are the same. The Saudis mentioned by Brisard are: Khalid bin Mahfouz; Yassin al-Qadi; Saleh Abdullah Kamel; Abdullah Suleiman al-Rajhi; Adel Abdul Jalil Batterjee; Mohammed Hussein al-Amoudi; and Wa'el Hamza Julaidan (who has had his assets frozen by the US [State Department, 9/6/02]). Brisard says al-Qaeda has received between $300 million and $500 million over the last 10 years from...