Insider Report from Newsmax.com

Insider Report from Newsmax.com

Headlines (Scroll down for complete stories):
1. Ahmadinejad Feted at Obama Fundraiser’s Hotel
2. Ambassador Holbrooke: Don’t Let Ahmadinejad Speak
3. Biden Has Given Little to Charity
4. Palin’s Newsmax Interview Gains Wide Play
5. Hillary Campaign Still Deep in Debt
6. Washington Times Quotes Newsmax Report
7. We Heard: Bill O’Reilly, Sarah Palin, National Anthem





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1. Ahmadinejad Feted at Obama Fundraiser’s Hotel

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was feted on Thursday night by left-wing U.S. religious leaders and self-styled pacifists at a gala reception at New York’s Hyatt hotel — which is owned by the family of the Obama campaign’s national finance chairperson, Penny Pritzker.

Several thousand protesters gathered on 42nd street, directly across from the hotel, late Thursday afternoon, including Beth Gilinsky, president of the Jewish Action Alliance; Frank Gaffney, president of the Center for Security Policy; and the Rev. Keith Roderick, the Episcopal canon to persecuted Christians.

Ahmadinejad arrived at 8:45 p.m., nearly three hours late, and was protected by the Secret Service and Iranian security guards, Newsmax correspondent Kenneth R. Timmerman reported.

Inside, the Iranian president was given a warm welcome by John Brademas, a former congressman from Indiana who rose to become Democratic whip in the House from 1977-1981.

Also welcoming him was Nihad Awad, executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), which was named as an “unindicted co-conspirator” in an alleged criminal conspiracy to fund the Palestinian terrorist organization Hamas.

Ahmadinejad began his address with an invocation of the 12th imam, according to a source who attended the event.

He made a similar invocation of the 12th imam at the start of his speech to the U.N. General Assembly on Tuesday, adding that he hoped his actions “would hasten the Imam’s return.” He went on to blast Israel and the United States in that speech.

The Mahdivist cult of Shia Islam, to which Ahmadinejad subscribes, holds that the 12th imam will “return” to earth after a period of worldwide conflagration, mass destruction, famine, and starvation.

By calling on his own actions to “hasten” the imam’s return, many scholars of Islam believe that Ahmadinejad is revealing his intention to provoke a world war.

Ahmadinejad has referred to Israel as “a dried, rotten tree that will collapse with a single storm,” and has called on the Muslim world to “prepare for the great war, so as to completely wipe out the Zionist regime and remove this cancerous growth.”

Government buildings in Tehran are festooned with giant banners that read, “Israel should be wiped out of the face of the world” in English and Persian. Similar banners are draped across Shahab-3 missiles when the Iranian regime drives them through the streets of Tehran in military parades, Timmerman reports.

Barack Obama has made negotiations with Ahmadinejad and other dictators a cornerstone of his foreign policy approach, in contrast to John McCain, who believes that the U.S. must spearhead an international coalition to prevent Iran from going nuclear.

Obama has said that he is ready to sit down with Ahmadinejad “without preconditions” to negotiate a sweeping security agreement with his regime. McCain has dismissed this as “reckless,” and McCain’s top foreign policy adviser, Randy Scheunemann, has called it “cowboy diplomacy.”

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2. Ambassador Holbrooke: Don’t Let Ahmadinejad Speak

Iran is “uniquely dangerous” due to President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s threat to destroy Israel — and the Iranian leader should not be allowed to speak in the U.S., says former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Richard Holbrooke.

"People haven't focused energy on the core reason that Iran is uniquely dangerous — because of specific threats Iran has issued to another country based on ethnicity," Holbrooke said at the State-Sanctioned Incitement to Genocide Conference in Washington, D.C., on Sept. 23.

"I do want to underscore . . . that the full title of the 1948 Genocide Convention is in fact the ‘Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of Genocide.’ Genocide is only defined after it occurs. We must focus on prevention.”

Ahmadinejad was addressing the U.N. during the week that the conference was held.

"Ahmadinejad is at the U.N. — we can't stop him from speaking there" because the U.N. should be a forum for all, said Holbrooke, who is now on the board of directors of the Council on Foreign Relations.

"I've never supported a ban against anyone there because we would damage ourselves. But we should never invite him to speak anywhere else. Not because I'm afraid his words will influence anyone who hears them, but because he uses these forums to legitimize himself in Iran.

“We need people in Iran to denounce him. There are many vulnerabilities in this man. By singling out Ahmadinejad on this issue we send a signal to the Iranian leadership that their ties to Hezbollah will not sell internationally.

"We want to generate debate over Iran. We want them to understand they'll face isolation in the international community.”

The conference was sponsored by the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, Genocide Watch, Conference of Presidents of Major Jewish Organizations, International Association of Genocide Scholars, and Yale University's Initiative for the Interdisciplinary Study of Anti-Semitism.

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3. Biden Has Given Little to Charity

Democratic vice presidential nominee Joe Biden has released his personal income tax records — revealing that the Delaware senator and his wife have been very stingy when it comes to charitable gifts.

The Bidens had an adjusted gross income of $319,853 in 2007, including his Senate salary, book royalties, and his wife’s salary as an English teacher. But their charitable gifts totaled $995 — just 0.31 percent of their income, according to the TaxProf Web site.

The year before, they earned $248,859 and donated just $380, or 0.15 percent of their adjusted gross income.

Over the past decade they reported giving an average of $369 a year to charity, Bloomberg.com reports.

According to Independent Sector, the average annual charitable donation among households earning in excess of $200,000 is $20,434.

The Bidens’ “lack of charitable giving at that level of income would definitely be outside the range of what we say is normal,” Russell James, a professor at the University of Georgia who conducts research on charitable giving, told Bloomberg.

Republican presidential nominee John McCain’s tax returns show he had an adjusted gross income of $386,527 last year and had charitable givings of $105,467, or 27.3 percent of income. His wife Cindy files separately.

His Democratic rival Barack Obama had $4.13 million in income in 2007 and gave $240,370, or 5.8 percent.
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4. Palin’s Newsmax Interview Gains Wide Play

Newsmax created a stir in the rest of the media by featuring an exclusive interview with Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin before she became John McCain’s surprise choice for running mate.

In the September issue of Newsmax magazine, Palin discussed global warming, the upcoming election, her achievements as governor, and the need for increased oil drilling in Alaska.

The issue was already hitting the stands when McCain announced that Palin would be his vice presidential nominee on Aug. 29. That same day, the Newsmax interview was cited by The Washington Post, ABC News, Newsday, Politico, the Los Angeles Times, and The New Republic.

Other media outlets chimed in the following day, Aug. 30: the St. Louis Post Dispatch, Talking Points Memo, and Mother Jones.

CNN.com publicized the interview on Aug. 31, and Time magazine’s Web site caught up with the story on Sept. 1.

In the days that followed, Newsmax’s Palin interview was cited by the South Florida Sun-Sentinel, the Orlando Sentinel, The National Review Online, the Chicago Tribune, the Baltimore Sun, Portfolio.com, Media Life Magazine, The Moderate Voice, and for a second time by the Los Angeles Times.

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5. Hillary Campaign Still Deep in Debt

Hillary Clinton is still struggling to repay her huge campaign debt despite presidential nominee Barack Obama’s attempts to stir up financial support from his backers.

Clinton owed about $22.2 million at the end of August, down from approximately $24 million at the end of July, according to figures filed a week ago with the Federal Election Commission.

Clinton spokesman Mo Elleithee said Hillary’s campaign reduced what it owes to vendors from $12 million in June to less than $9 million by Aug. 31.

Hillary lent herself $13 million to help fund her campaign, but Elleithee told the New York Daily News: “Hillary’s said repeatedly that her main focus is to pay debts to the small vendors. She’s not really looking to be repaid for the money she lent to the campaign.”

An Obama aide told the Daily News that the candidate is planning to help Hillary raise funds this fall, and is urging top backers to make the maximum legal donation to Clinton’s campaign.

Meanwhile Clinton has reportedly helped raise more than $5 million for the Obama campaign.
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6. Washington Times Quotes Newsmax Report

A leading national security expert has cited an exclusive report by Newsmax correspondent Kenneth R. Timmerman in an article about Barack Obama’s ties to controversial figures.

Frank Gaffney, president of the Center for Security Policy, wrote in a Washington Times article published Tuesday, “What do [Iranian President] Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Barack Obama have in common?” He answered, “Both have chosen to spend much of their lives in the company of people who are virulently hostile to this country.”

Gaffney mentioned Obama’s former pastor Jeremiah Wright — who called on God to “damn America” — convicted terrorist William Ayers, and Frank Marshall Davis, a “Stalinist black communist” whom Obama described as a formative influence during his early years in Hawaii.

Gaffney then explored Obama’s relationship with Khalid al-Mansour, formerly Don Warden, attributing his disclosures this way: “According to investigative reporter Kenneth Timmerman.”

Gaffney wrote, including a quote from Timmerman’s report: “Since his conversion to Islam, al-Mansour has worked closely with a Saudi billionaire anxious to ‘exert influence in the United States,’ Prince Alwaleed bin Talal. It will be recalled that the latter was the Wahhabi whose largesse then-New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani famously spurned after 9/11 upon learning the Saudi royal had blamed American policies for that day's horrific attack. Obama reportedly benefited from [his] help in securing a position at Harvard Law School.”

Timmerman first broke the story about al-Mansour in an exclusive Newsmax report published on Sept. 3. In a follow-up story published on Tuesday, best-selling author Timmerman observed: “How exactly did Barack Obama pay for his Harvard Law School education?

“The way the Obama campaign has answered the question was simply hard work and student loans.

“But new questions have been raised about Obama’s student loans and Obama’s ties to a radical Muslim activist who reportedly was raising money for Obama’s Harvard studies during the years 1988 to 1991.

“The allegations first surfaced in late March, when former Manhattan Borough President Percy Sutton told a New York cable channel that a former business partner who was ‘raising money’ for Obama had approached him in 1988 to help Obama get into Harvard Law School.

“In the interview, Sutton says he first heard of Obama about 20 years ago from Khalid Al-Mansour, a Black Muslim and Black Nationalist who was a ‘mentor’ to the founders of the Black Panther party at the time the party was founded in the early 1960s.

“Sutton described al-Mansour as advisor to ‘one of the world’s richest men,’ Saudi prince Alwaleed bin Talal.”


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7. We Heard . . .

THAT you might not know anything about the hacking of Sarah Palin’s Yahoo e-mail account if you relied on several members of the left-wing mainstream press.

Computer hackers broke into the private e-mail account of the Republican vice presidential nominee and posted some of her messages and a list of contacts on the Internet.

But The New York Times’ print edition didn’t cover the story at all, relegating it to their blog.

And the Los Angeles Times buried its 85-word article in the middle of Page A16 in its Sept. 18 edition.

THAT Wikileaks, the Web site that posted screen shots of Sarah Palin’s e-mail account, has posted documents indicating that Fox News’ Bill O’Reilly’s site may also have been hacked.

A short list of names and passwords for premium members of BillOReilly.com was recently posted, according to Wikileaks.

But it wasn’t clear if user names or passwords were authentic, pcmag.com reported.

Premium members receive discounts at the BillOReilly.com store, among other benefits.

THAT the mainstream media gave plenty of coverage to a professional basketball player’s remarks disrespecting “The Star Spangled Banner” — but there’s more to the story than has been told.

Dallas Mavericks star Josh Howard was taking part in a recent charity flag football game and was videotaped during a playing of the national anthem.

Howard was widely quoted as saying, “‘The Star Spangled Banner’ is going on right now. I don’t even celebrate that [bleep]. I’m black.”

What was NOT reported was that as Howard completed his remarks, a voice could be heard saying: “Obama ’08.”