[courtesy of The California Majority Report]

The front page of today’s San Francisco Chronicle features one of the strangest political stories I’ve seen in some time. "The state chairman of the 'Californians for Obama' campaign has raised thousands of dollars in donations through promotions ranging from celebrity-studded Mexican cruises to CD sales to campaign office 'grand openings' in support of the popular Illinois Democratic senator and presidential candidate. But the official presidential campaign of Barack Obama said Tuesday it was unaware of the activities of the entirely unauthorized Los Angeles-based fundraising efforts of Emmett Cash III..."
 
Critics say Cash’s "his independent efforts to parlay Obama's presidential drive into a fundraising bonanza illustrates an increasingly disturbing trend in political campaigns of the Internet age -- the proliferation of entrepreneurs who use technology to scoop up voter donations without official campaign sanction… while Cash has raised nearly $10,000 this year, not one dollar has gone to the Obama campaign -- or any other political candidate."