Paging PUMA head Will Bower. Will Bower, please report to the white courtesy phone.
As we noted on July 10th, head PUMA Will Bower was claiming that his Just Say No Deal coalition had raised anywhere from 6 to 10 million dollars to pay down Hillary Clinton’s debt during a July 4th fundraising initiative. He even went a delusional step further and boasted on Fox News’ Your World on July 10th, during what was billed as an “exclusive” announcement (full video here), that by the end of the upcoming weekend, due to a final PUMA “push,” Hillary’s debt would be “finished.”
Clinton pays down her debts a little, with a little help from Obama
Hillary Clinton whittled down her presidential campaign debt by $1.3 million in July, and presumptive nominee Barack Obama chipped in to help.
Clinton’s latest campaign disclosure filed Wednesday shows Obama gave her $4,600, a sum that presumably includes the maximum donation of $2,300 from the senator and $2,300 from Michelle Obama. The contribution was dated July 31. [...]
Despite suspending her campaign in June, Clinton raised $2 million in July.
And that’s how much she raised for the entire month of July. That one’s going to leave a mark.
That’s a grand total of $85,602.43 for July 1st through July 6th, not even remotely close to the PUMAs’ “conservative” estimate of $6 million dollars (it’s 1.4% of that claim, 0.86% of the $10 million figure) and that’s not even accounting for the fact that all of the donations during that time period didn’t come from self-identified PUMAs.
MORE: Might as well run this video again. It would be a pity to let PUMA PAC’s Darragh Murphy off the hook, too.
WHY NOT?: I’ve never encouraged anyone to engage in email campaigns, but some of you may want to contact Your World (please, keep it nice) and let them know that Bower duped them with his exclusive. Past evidence suggest that they’ll be the PUMAs’ main go-to media get in Denver, so it probably wouldn’t hurt to let Cavuto and crew know that Bower is not to be trusted. You can contact them at yourworld@foxnews.com.
Bahahaha! We never saw that coming, did we? I wonder if it’s possible to get a breakdown of individual contribution amounts? If I recall correctly, the PUMAs were supposedly donating in $20.08 increments so Hillary would “know” it was from them.
I hereby challenge any PUMA to prove that the group raised even a quarter of Bower’s “conservative” estimate of the alleged PUMA haul, i.e., $1.5M. If they can prove PUMA raised $1.5M within the timeframe Bower specified on TV, I’ll donate $20.08 to Clinton myself. C’mon PUMAs, put MY money where YOUR mouth is!
We are not involved with PUMAPAC. I don’t know where they are in terms of raising money, but I think they were, let’s say, overly optimistic about the money they raised to retire Hillary’s debt, and that put question marks in some people’s mind as to whether we should affiliate with them at all.
I just noticed Blackwater also uses an animal paw for its logo.
I believe they’re going to be protecting the PUMAs from the Obamathugs in Denver, so it makes sense. I hope all of the pet rabbits in Colorado are adequately guarded.
A thought that popped into my head, last night, was: How do you ‘estimate’ that Hillary rec’d millions of dollars in contributions over a weekend? The money wasn’t going thru PUMA/JSND, so they didn’t have direct exposure to any numbers. Blog comments and e-mails about contributions? Any idea how many comments and e-mails you’d have to track and hold to arrive at an aggregate of $6-10 Million? Not gonna happen.
Another point: regardless of the specific amount they ‘raised’, the donations would have to come from people who either hadn’t donated to Hillary’s Primary campaign or, at the very least, hadn’t maxed out their contributions. Why weren’t these heroes donating to Hillary’s campaign months ago?
I found it soooo amusing when Murphy was questioned on Hardball about the conflicting announcements regarding contributions ($50K vs $6M)
Murphy: No, it was $50K Shuster: Well, one of your spokesman said $6K. Murphy: None of our spokesman said $6K Bower: [crickets]
Will Bower is such a little puss. He was the one making the $6M claims all along and he just let Murphy hang out there in the wind to fend for herself. If I didn’t know whether or not Bower was a lying pussy before, I knew that when I watched the Hardball interview. I was expecting him to correct his earlier reports with lame excuses when the $50K/$6M portion of the interview popped up and he just sat there. I would have had a little more respect for him if he at least made an attempt to explain the inconsistency. His silence spoke volumes about what a lying sack of shite he is!
I wonder how far AWAY from Denver Darragh can get on the $25,000 she raised last week for bottled water and smelling salts at the PUMA Pavilion. This announcement could be the big, “Hey, what the—?” moment I’ve been hoping the PUMAs would experience right before the convention. This does not speak well for their “huge” numbers and unstoppable political clout.
I emailed it to the generic Hardball address. I’m guessing Tommy or Christina will email it to the Hardball producer they contacted before. I just emailed it to a bunch of people, including The Daily Show. Does anyone have any direct contact info for them? They’re definitely filming the PUMAs in Denver on Monday. Still time to get this to them.
sorry, I just wanted to get in on all the roaring. That’s a California roar if you didn’t know. Sounds different than other roars, knd of sleepy and sweet in a tough roaring-like way.
OK, well, this is FINALLY penetrating the hive consciousness of the comments threads at PUMApac and HillaryClintonForum. First reactions are a very satisfying, “WTF? I thought we paid her debt OFF!!!”
This will only get better as the afternoon unfolds.
Oh, and for the record, the 85 grand is about 4.3 cents per PUMA. The power of the masses.
Poputonian, I think I donated more to Hillary’s campaign and I didn’t even donate to Hillary’s campaign. Let me explain: I bought the Obama book The Audacity of Hope. Barack Obama gets paid some money for each book sold (I assume). Barack Obama donates the max to the Clinton Campaign, some of which could have been my money from the purchase of The Audacity of Hope. Ergo I donated more money to Hillary than the average PUMA. RRRROOOOAAAAARRRRRR
The “WTF?” thread got pulled at the Forum only moments after it appeared. Not ready to drop the bomb just yet, apparently.
There’s another thread going now. Predictably, some of them are using PUMATH to come up with justification for Will’s numbers, but a few of them are seeing the light. There’s gotta be a point when some of these folks get tired of being lied to.
Thank you, Kevin. I got a couple of decent shots in, but I haven’t been able to make a serious project out of it. ;-> Anyway, it seemed the comments section already eminently well-defended.
You’re right about the new thread on HCF, and the contrarian logic at work. If you count June AND July, you sort of get a number kind of like the low end of what Will Bower claimed for the July 4th weekend, only. And, anyway, $1.3 million is a LOT of money, really, if you squint real hard, and if you just write off the $13 million Hillary tossed in a bonfire. And, hey, there goes Elvis! Er, um, PUMA!
This is what I love about rumproast ... roasters can get into the deep-thinking mindset whenever it’s needed to take on a formidable challenge. PUMathmeticians at their best.
Anybody check McCain’s FEC filings just in case? Given Darragh’s penchant for throwing money at him to..save the Dems, or something...I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s $50K from PUMA
I thought I’d heard something about $6-10 million over the Fourth of July, too. Argh! There have been so many times when I’ve heard Obots say, “If you all care so much about Hillary Clinton, why does she still have a sh*tload of debt?"… and I’ve said, “On the contrary, PUMAS raised $6-10 million by the first week of July!”
Bah. I feel dumb now. Guess I should have checked my facts.
On July 10, 2008, I received the debt information from two sources, John West (of the “300” Petition, “ClintonDems”, “Democracy Workshop”, and “I Own My Vote") and Cynthia Ruccia (of “Women for Fair Politics").
Both West and Ruccia later contacted Caren Turner (of “ToGetHer4Us") to confirm with her that they had indeed been my sources.
John West later went on to reveal his source as having been Jamie Brazil—a cousin of Hillary Clinton (as he has been described to me)—who (according to West) had received that information in a conference call with Clinton finance-team leader, Jonathan Mantz.
There were other witnesses who had heard such information being generated by one or more of the sources listed above, namely, individuals within the organization “Real Democrats USA"… although they themselves were not responsible for passing that information on to other sources.
This is how it came to pass that I shared this information with the media. We now know that this information was faulty. At the time, however, I had believed these sources to be reliable ones.
If you’d like to know more about how we received the debt information we did, I’d be happy to give you some of the history. I don’t I think I should post it *too* openly (for the time being), but I’ll be glad to answer what questions I can about it.
We have since learned that the original source may have had a lack of concern about passing on reliable information. I had little reason to mistrust my direct sources, but it seems as if *they* may have had reasons to mistrust *theirs*.
Have no doubt — if I could change one thing about the last 6 months — it would be to not have passed on unreliable information. I was very new to the “Source” game and learned the hard way.
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