For someone who knocked McCain saying that the fundamentals of our economy were strong, where pray tell is all this money coming from? So meanwhile McCain sticks by his word on campaign funds, Obama lied. So while Obama gets funds from foreign sources - which by the way is illegal, we find they are from not so great sources.

Last December, someone using the name “Test Person,” from “Some Place, UT,” made a series of contributions, the largest being $764, to Senator Barack Obama’s presidential campaign totaling $2,410.07.

Someone identifying himself as “Jockim Alberton,” from 1581 Leroy Avenue in Wilmington, Del., began giving to Mr. Obama last November, contributing $10 and $25 at a time for a total of $445 through the end of February. LINK

Aides to Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) scheduled pricey luncheons, roundtables, readings, VIP receptions and policy dinners with campaign officials and advisers, offering donors a taste of his potential administration.

Supporters could eat dinner in Los Angeles with Warren Buffett, an Obama adviser and one of history’s shrewdest investors, for $28,500, the federal limit for donations by an individual to a national party committee.

Or they could attend a “VIP reception” with the sage of Omaha for $10,000, or an “economic roundtable” for just $1,000.

The Obama campaign declined to comment on the schedule.

A “Round Table Discussion” in Boston with Robert E. Rubin, who was Treasury secretary under President Bill Clinton and talked on the phone with Obama as the financial crisis broke out, cost $28,500.

And a reception in Boston with former Sen. Tom Daschle (D-S.D.), a possible chief of staff in an Obama White House, was offered for $500 or $2,500.

Tickets to a reception in Boston with Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.), a possible secretary of defense in an Obama Cabinet, were offered for a bargain-basement $250 or $500.

Obama has raised more than $600 million for his campaign, $150 million of that in September alone. For comparison, President Bush, who at the time was the richest candidate ever, raised just $367 million in his entire two-year reelection cycle.

Much has been made of Obama’s canny mining of small-dollar donors, with constant e-mails asking for donations of as little as $5. The average donation in September was $86. Two-thirds of the $150 million was raised via the Web. LINK

Faced with a huge influx of donations over the Internet, the campaign has also chosen not to use basic security measures to prevent potentially illegal or anonymous contributions from flowing into its accounts, aides acknowledged. Instead, the campaign is scrutinizing its books for improper donations after the money has been deposited.

The Obama organization said its extensive review has ensured that the campaign has refunded any improper contributions, and noted that Federal Election Commission rules do not require front-end screening of donations.

In recent weeks, questionable contributions have created headaches for Obama's accounting team as it has tried to explain why campaign finance filings have included itemized donations from individuals using fake names, such as Es Esh or Doodad Pro. Those revelations prompted conservative bloggers to further test Obama's finance vetting by giving money using the kind of prepaid cards that can be bought at a drugstore and cannot be traced to a donor.

The problem with such cards, campaign finance lawyers said, is that they make it impossible to tell whether foreign nationals, donors who have exceeded the limits, government contractors or others who are barred from giving to a federal campaign are making contributions.

"They have opened the floodgates to all this money coming in," said Sean Cairncross, chief counsel to the Republican National Committee. "I think they've made the determination that whatever money they have to refund on the back end doesn't outweigh the benefit of taking all this money upfront."

The Obama campaign has shattered presidential fundraising records, in part by capitalizing on the ease of online giving. Of the $150 million the senator from Illinois raised in September, nearly $100 million came in over the Internet.

Lawyers for the Obama operation said yesterday that their "extensive back-end review" has carefully scrubbed contributions to prevent illegal money from entering the operation's war chest. "I'm pretty sure if I took my error rate and matched it against any other campaign or comparable nonprofit, you'd find we're doing very well," said Robert Bauer, a lawyer for the campaign. "I have not seen the McCain compliance staff ascending to heaven on a cloud."

The Obama team's disclosures came in response to questions from The Washington Post about the case of Mary T. Biskup, a retired insurance manager from Manchester, Mo., who turned up on Obama's FEC reports as having donated $174,800 to the campaign. Contributors are limited to giving $2,300 for the general election.

Biskup, who had scores of Obama contributions attributed to her, said in an interview that she never donated to the candidate. "That's an error," she said. Moreover, she added, her credit card was never billed for the donations, meaning someone appropriated her name and made the contributions with another card.

When asked whether the campaign takes steps to verify whether a donor's name matches the name on the credit card used to make a payment, Obama's campaign replied in an e-mail: "Name-matching is not a standard check conducted or made available in the credit card processing industry. We believe Visa and MasterCard do not even have the ability to do this.  LINK

WASHINGTON (AP) — It wasn't Barack Obama's most critically acclaimed moment.

When the Democratic presidential candidate reneged on his pledge to take public financing for the general election, campaign watchdog groups and newspaper editorialists pounced. They all hoped he would help salvage a broken campaign finance system.

Instead, he created a whole new one, and he destined the current system of public financing to the trash heap.

On Sunday, Obama's campaign announced he had raised more than $150 million in September alone, a previously unimaginable fundraising rate of $5 million a day. Republican rival John McCain, who chose to participate in the public system, has been limited by law to spending only $84 million in September and October.

At Obama's clip, his fundraising will easily surpass the $650 million total spent by President Bush and Democrat John Kerry combined in 2004. Indeed, by using sophisticated new social networking tools to reach legions of small donors, Obama has already exceeded the forecasts of some campaign finance seers who two years ago were predicting the two parties' nominees would each spend about $500 million.

The extraordinary sum vindicated Obama's decision. It also made a public finance system born after the excesses of the Watergate era look decidedly quaint.

"People will look back at 2008 as the year that Barack Obama once and for all destroyed public financing as we know it," said Todd Harris, a Republican strategist who worked on McCain's 2000 presidential campaign. "It will be very difficult four years from now for any candidate to make the case that they should participate in public financing given the obvious financial advantage that Obama has received by opting out." LINK

As Barack Obama reaped a stunning $150 million in campaign donations in September, bringing his total to more than $600 million, new questions have arisen about the source of his amazing funding.

By Obama’s own admission, more than half of his contributions have come from small donors giving $200 or less. But unlike John McCain’s campaign, Obama won’t release the names of these donors.

A Newsmax canvass of disclosed Obama campaign donors shows worrisome anomalies, including outright violations of federal election laws.

For example, Obama has numerous donors who have contributed well over the $4,600 federal election limit.

Many of these donors have never been contacted by the Obama campaign to refund the excess amounts to them.

And more than 37,000 Obama donations appear to be conversions of foreign currency.  LINK

More than half of the whopping $426.9 million Barack Obama has raised has come from small donors whose names the Obama campaign won't disclose.

And questions have arisen about millions more in foreign donations the Obama campaign has received that apparently have not been vetted as legitimate.

Obama has raised nearly twice that of John McCain's campaign, according to new campaign finance report.

But because of Obama’s high expenses during the hotly contested Democratic primary season and an early decision to forgo public campaign money and the spending limits it imposes, all that cash has not translated into a financial advantage — at least, not yet.

The Obama campaign and the Democratic National Committee began September with $95 million in cash, according to reports filed with the Federal Election Commission (FEC).

The McCain camp and the Republican National Committee had $94 million, because of an influx of $84 million in public money.  LINK

Barack Obama raised more than $150 million in September, a stunning and unprecedented eruption of political giving that has given him a wide spending advantage over rival John McCain.

The Democrat's campaign released the figure Sunday, one day before it must file a detailed report of its monthly finances with the Federal Election Commission.

Obama's money is fueling a vast campaign operation in an expanding field of competitive states. It also has underwritten a wave of both national and targeted video advertising unseen before in a presidential contest. LINK

What do Bart Simpson, Family Guy, Daffy Duck, King Kong, O.J. Simpson, and Raela Odinga have in common?

All are celebrities; and with the exception of Odinga and O.J. Simpson, they also are fictional characters. And yet, all of them gave money earlier this month to the campaign of Barack Obama, without any apparent effort by the campaign to screen them out as suspect donors.

The Obama fundraising machine may owe its sensational success in part to a relaxation of standard online merchant security practices, which has allowed illegal donations from foreign donors and from unknown individuals using anonymous “gift” cards, industry analysts and a confidential informant tell Newsmax.

An ongoing Newsmax investigation into the Obama campaign’s finance reports has exposed multiple instances of campaign finance violations and has been cited in a formal complaint to the Federal Election Commission filed by the Republican National Committee on Oct. 6.

Though many of the known violations include donations in excess of the $2,300 per election limit on individual contributions and contributions from foreign nationals, the extent of the amount of fraud is hidden because of a loophole in federal election law.

Campaigns are not required to disclose contributors who donate less than $200 — and Obama’s campaign refuses to release their names, addresses, and donation amounts. Obama has collected a staggering $603.2 million. Most of the money — $543.3 million — has come from individual contributors, half of it from “small” donors Obama won’t disclose.  LINK