Sunday, November 30, 2008
Saturday, November 29, 2008
Thursday, November 27, 2008
Why the Obama Birth Certificate Issue Is Legitimate
November 26, 2008
Why the Barack Obama Birth Certificate Issue Is Legitimate
By Joe the Farmer
Does this Barack Obama birth certificate issue bug you because, although improbable, it's possible that he's not a natural born citizen, isn't eligible to be President under the Constitution, and this issue could be bigger than Watergate -- or any other "gate" in history?
Are you afraid that if you were even to raise the subject with your friends that they will think you wear a tinfoil hat, because Factcheck.org, the final arbiter of truth in the universe, said so?
Are you with the news media, and after spending so much money to get Barack Obama elected, you'd hate to ruin your investment?
Are you a talk radio host who thinks that if you say the burden of proof needed to demonstrate one is eligible to be Commander in Chief should be at least as high as, oh, say, the level to be eligible for Hawaiian homestead status (see 1.F. below), that you'd be forced to give equal time to someone who disagrees?
Are you a conservative, libertarian, or any conscientious constitutionalist from any ideological side of life, who's convinced something's not right, but you're afraid your reputation might be tarnished because, after all, this could be one big Saul-Alinsky-style set-up, and the joke would be on you?
Fear not! Joe the Farmer has prepared an outline showing that no matter how this issue is ultimately resolved, you have legitimate concerns, and that Barack Obama should, simply out of respect for the nation he was elected to lead, disclose the sealed vault copy of his birth certificate.
Given the circumstances, if Barack Obama respected this nation, he would prove it by the simplest and easiest of gestures - unless, of course, all this talk about change and hope was just a bunch of bull, and he's just "another politician." Here's the outline:
1. Under Hawaiian law, it is possible (both legally and illegally) for a person to have been born out of state, yet have a birth certificate on file in the Department of Health.
4. Obama has refused to disclose the vault copy of his Hawaiian birth certificate. This raises the question whether he himself has established that he is eligible to be President. To date, no state or federal election official, nor any government authority, has verified that he ever established conclusively that he meets the eligibility standard under the Constitution. If the burden of proof were on him, perhaps as it should be for the highest office of any individual in America, the more-than-dozen lawsuits challenging his eligibility would be unnecessary.
The pen name Joe the Farmer pays tribute to Joe the Plumber, who had the audacity to ask a question.
Why the Barack Obama Birth Certificate Issue Is Legitimate
By Joe the Farmer
Does this Barack Obama birth certificate issue bug you because, although improbable, it's possible that he's not a natural born citizen, isn't eligible to be President under the Constitution, and this issue could be bigger than Watergate -- or any other "gate" in history?
Are you afraid that if you were even to raise the subject with your friends that they will think you wear a tinfoil hat, because Factcheck.org, the final arbiter of truth in the universe, said so?
Are you with the news media, and after spending so much money to get Barack Obama elected, you'd hate to ruin your investment?
Are you a talk radio host who thinks that if you say the burden of proof needed to demonstrate one is eligible to be Commander in Chief should be at least as high as, oh, say, the level to be eligible for Hawaiian homestead status (see 1.F. below), that you'd be forced to give equal time to someone who disagrees?
Are you a conservative, libertarian, or any conscientious constitutionalist from any ideological side of life, who's convinced something's not right, but you're afraid your reputation might be tarnished because, after all, this could be one big Saul-Alinsky-style set-up, and the joke would be on you?
Fear not! Joe the Farmer has prepared an outline showing that no matter how this issue is ultimately resolved, you have legitimate concerns, and that Barack Obama should, simply out of respect for the nation he was elected to lead, disclose the sealed vault copy of his birth certificate.
Given the circumstances, if Barack Obama respected this nation, he would prove it by the simplest and easiest of gestures - unless, of course, all this talk about change and hope was just a bunch of bull, and he's just "another politician." Here's the outline:
1. Under Hawaiian law, it is possible (both legally and illegally) for a person to have been born out of state, yet have a birth certificate on file in the Department of Health.
- From Hawaii's official Department of Health, Vital Records webpage: "Amended certificates of birth may be prepared and filed with the Department of Health, as provided by law, for 1) a person born in Hawaii who already has a birth certificate filed with the Department of Health or 2) a person born in a foreign country" (applies to adopted children).
- A parent may register an in-state birth in lieu of certification by a hospital of birth under HRS 338-5.
- Hawaiian law expressly provides for registration of out-of-state births under HRS 338-17.8. A foreign birth presumably would have been recorded by the American consular of the country of birth, and presumably that would be reflected on the Hawaiian birth certificate.
- Hawaiian law, however, expressly acknowledges that its system is subject to error. See, for example, HRS 338-17.
- Hawaiian law expressly provides for verification in lieu of certified copy of a birth certificate under HRS 338-14.3.
- Even the Hawaii Department of Home Lands does not accept a certified copy of a birth certificate as conclusive evidence for its homestead program. From its web site: "In order to process your application, DHHL utilizes information that is found only on the original Certificate of Live Birth, which is either black or green. This is a more complete record of your birth than the Certification of Live Birth (a computer-generated printout). Submitting the original Certificate of Live Birth will save you time and money since the computer-generated Certification requires additional verification by DHHL."
- Associated Press reported about a statement of Hawaii Health Department Director Dr. Fukino, "State declares Obama birth certificate genuine."
- That October 31, 2008 statement says that Dr. Fukino "ha[s] personally seen and verified that the Hawai'i State Department of Health has Sen. Obama's original birth certificate on record in accordance with state policies and procedures." That statement does not, however, verify that Obama was born in Hawaii, and as explained above, under Hawaiian policies and procedures it is quite possible that Hawaii may have a birth record of a person not born in Hawaii. Unlikely, but possible.
- The document that the Obama campaign released to the public is a certified copy of Obama's birth record, which is not the best evidence since, even under Hawaiian law, the original vault copy is the better evidence. Presumably, the vault record would show whether his birth was registered by a hospital in Hawaii.
- Without accusing anyone of any wrongdoing, we nevertheless know that some people have gone to great lengths, even in violation of laws, rules and procedures, to confer the many benefits of United States citizenship on themselves and their children. Given the structure of the Hawaiian law, the fact that a parent may register a birth, and the limited but inherent potential for human error within the system, it is possible that a parent of a child born out-of-state could have registered that birth to confer the benefits of U.S. citizenship, or simply to avoid bureaucratic hassles at that time or later in the child's life.
- We don't know whether the standards of registration by the Department of Health were more or less stringent in 1961 (the year of Obama's birth) than they are today. However, especially with post-9/11 scrutiny, we do know that there have been instances of fraudulent registrations of foreign births as American births.
- From a 2004 Department of Justice news release about multiple New Jersey vital statistics employees engaged in schemes to issue birth certificates to foreign-born individuals: "An individual who paid Anderson and her co-conspirators for the service of creating the false birth records could then go to Office of Vital Statistics to receive a birth certificate . . . As part of the investigation, federal agents executed a search warrant of the HCOVS on Feb. 18, 2004, which resulted in the seizure of hundreds of suspect Certificates of Live Birth which falsely indicated that the named individuals were born in Jersey City, when in fact, they were born outside the United States and were in the United States illegally . . . Bhutta purchased from Goswamy false birth certificates for himself and his three foreign-born children."
- Even before 9/11, government officials acknowledged the "ease" of obtaining birth certificates fraudulently. From 1999 testimony by one Social Security Administration official: "Furthermore, the identity data contained in Social Security records are only as reliable as the evidence on which the data are based. The documents that a card applicant must present to establish age, identity, and citizenship, usually a birth certificate and immigration documents-are relatively easy to alter, counterfeit, or obtain fraudulently."
4. Obama has refused to disclose the vault copy of his Hawaiian birth certificate. This raises the question whether he himself has established that he is eligible to be President. To date, no state or federal election official, nor any government authority, has verified that he ever established conclusively that he meets the eligibility standard under the Constitution. If the burden of proof were on him, perhaps as it should be for the highest office of any individual in America, the more-than-dozen lawsuits challenging his eligibility would be unnecessary.
- Had he disclosed his vault copy in the Berg v. Obama lawsuit (which was the first lawsuit filed on the question of his eligibility to be President), and it was established he was born in Hawaii, that would have constituted res judicata, and acted to stop other similar lawsuits being filed. Without res judicata (meaning, the matter is adjudged and settled conclusively) he or government officials will need to defend other lawsuits, and valuable court resources will be expended. Strategically from a legal standpoint, therefore, his refusal to disclose doesn't make sense. Weighing factors such as costs, resources and complexity of disclosing versus not disclosing, he must have reason of considerable downside in disclosing, or upside in not disclosing. There may be other reasons, but one could speculate that he hasn't disclosed because:
- He was not born in Hawaii, and may not be eligible to be President;
- He was born in Hawaii, but facts that may be derived from his vault copy birth certificate are inconsistent with the life story he has told (and sold);
- He was born in Hawaii, and his refusal to provide the best evidence that he is a natural born citizen is a means by which to draw criticism of him in order to make him appear to be a "victim." This would energize his supporters. This would also make other charges about him seem suspect, including his concealment about ties to Bill Ayers and others of some infamy. Such a clever yet distasteful tactic would seem to be a Machiavelli- and Saul-Alinsky-style way to manipulate public opinion. But while this tactic may energize his supporters, it would convince those who believe him to be a manipulator that he's not only just that, but a real pro at it. This would indeed be the basest reason of all, and would have repercussions about his trustworthiness (both here and abroad), which Americans know, is a characteristic sorely lacking in its leaders.
- His motion to dismiss the Berg case for lack of standing could be viewed as contemptuous of the Constitution. See, "Who Enforces the Constitution's Natural Born Citizen Clause?" Are we to expect yet another White House that hides behind lawyers, and expects Americans to swallow half-truths on a just-trust-me basis?
- This issue poses the potential for a constitutional crisis unlike anything this country has seen. Disclosure at this stage, however, could even result in criminal sanctions. See, "Obama Must Stand Up Now Or Step Down." Thus, he has motive not to disclose if he were ineligible.
The pen name Joe the Farmer pays tribute to Joe the Plumber, who had the audacity to ask a question.
Labels:
birth certificate,
Obama,
President,
U.S. constitution
Wanted: Men and Women of Courage
Now the hard part comes. We are heading for winter, the time when the summer soldiers fall away and decide that it's easier to live with a King George III or a Barack Obama then to continue a losing fight or be seen as irrational or extremist.
What we were doing was a lot easier in 2002 than it will be in 2009. Back then we were supporting the US government in the War on Terror. Shortly we will be dealing with a US government that is itself pro-terrorist and a public that wants to hear more about massive government giveaways than about the terrorist threat.
Meanwhile Obama's omnipresent cult of personality is already a pervasive reality, but will become more so when he actually occupies the White House. And it takes courage not to fall in line with a pervasive message aggressively broadcast through every channel. Many have already fallen in line or abandoned the fight. Others still have let themselves be herded into a "moderate" cage, moderation naturally being defined by the opposition as toothless opposition toward them and ruthless opposition toward us.
We are about to find out what it was like to be a German in 1930's Germany who knew Nazism was rotten to the core led by a sociopathic clown, or a Russian in Stalin's USSR, a Cuban in Castro's Socialist Paradise or more accurately Venezuelans living under Hugo Chavez, who saw and see arrogant and incompetent dictators rising to power by foul means and spreading their cult of personality far and wide-- who see a society gone mad.
That is not to say that opposing Obama at this point will mean a knock on the door and a trip to a basement at the local office of the internal security services. We are not at that stage. But rejecting the cult of personality around Obama means rejecting the dominant cultural paradigm, and it takes a strong mind to do that.
Numerous psychological experiments have shown how easily people can be pressured and swayed into doing everything from performing shock torture to giving answers they know to be wrong when they see that everyone else gives the wrong answer.
By such means it is perfectly possible to induce sane and intelligent people to state that 2 + 2 = 5 if they see everyone surrounding them state that 2 + 2 = 5. Our mission in these times is to proclaim that 2 + 2 = 4 , no matter how many times the media and the mob insists that it's 5.
That is courage. Courage is not simply rushing into a fire, it is also defying convention and conformity. One man with courage makes a majority, because courage rests in holding to ideals rather than bowing to the majority. And that is what we need. Men and women with the courage to go on defying conformity and speak out for what is right.
It was easy to be an Anti-Jihad blogger in 2002. It will be increasingly hard in 2009. It will takecourage and it will take integrity. It will take sticking to what's right, despite silencing voices from all sides.
The weak minded are already falling away, penning congratulations and defenses of Obama. Others will give in to overt intimidation and peer pressure. But those who go on standing through the refining process will define the political resistance to the Obama Junta reading itself to seize control of America.
http://sultanknish.blogspot.com/2008/11/wanted-men-and-women-of-courage.html
What we were doing was a lot easier in 2002 than it will be in 2009. Back then we were supporting the US government in the War on Terror. Shortly we will be dealing with a US government that is itself pro-terrorist and a public that wants to hear more about massive government giveaways than about the terrorist threat.
Meanwhile Obama's omnipresent cult of personality is already a pervasive reality, but will become more so when he actually occupies the White House. And it takes courage not to fall in line with a pervasive message aggressively broadcast through every channel. Many have already fallen in line or abandoned the fight. Others still have let themselves be herded into a "moderate" cage, moderation naturally being defined by the opposition as toothless opposition toward them and ruthless opposition toward us.
We are about to find out what it was like to be a German in 1930's Germany who knew Nazism was rotten to the core led by a sociopathic clown, or a Russian in Stalin's USSR, a Cuban in Castro's Socialist Paradise or more accurately Venezuelans living under Hugo Chavez, who saw and see arrogant and incompetent dictators rising to power by foul means and spreading their cult of personality far and wide-- who see a society gone mad.
That is not to say that opposing Obama at this point will mean a knock on the door and a trip to a basement at the local office of the internal security services. We are not at that stage. But rejecting the cult of personality around Obama means rejecting the dominant cultural paradigm, and it takes a strong mind to do that.
Numerous psychological experiments have shown how easily people can be pressured and swayed into doing everything from performing shock torture to giving answers they know to be wrong when they see that everyone else gives the wrong answer.
By such means it is perfectly possible to induce sane and intelligent people to state that 2 + 2 = 5 if they see everyone surrounding them state that 2 + 2 = 5. Our mission in these times is to proclaim that 2 + 2 = 4 , no matter how many times the media and the mob insists that it's 5.
That is courage. Courage is not simply rushing into a fire, it is also defying convention and conformity. One man with courage makes a majority, because courage rests in holding to ideals rather than bowing to the majority. And that is what we need. Men and women with the courage to go on defying conformity and speak out for what is right.
It was easy to be an Anti-Jihad blogger in 2002. It will be increasingly hard in 2009. It will takecourage and it will take integrity. It will take sticking to what's right, despite silencing voices from all sides.
The weak minded are already falling away, penning congratulations and defenses of Obama. Others will give in to overt intimidation and peer pressure. But those who go on standing through the refining process will define the political resistance to the Obama Junta reading itself to seize control of America.
http://sultanknish.blogspot.com/2008/11/wanted-men-and-women-of-courage.html
More censorship on the net!
Click here to see story and proof of how Google has cut off Pamela
Geller starting Thursday, September 20th - http://tinyurl.com/57z65z
And watch what happens when you click here -
http://thenaturalborncitizen.blogspot.com/
This is getting really scary.
Geller starting Thursday, September 20th - http://tinyurl.com/57z65z
And watch what happens when you click here -
http://thenaturalborncitizen.blogspot.com/
This is getting really scary.
Tuesday, November 25, 2008
Lawyers will sue, and sue, and sue Obama until he comes clean!
OBAMA WATCH CENTRAL
WorldNetDaily Exclusive
Orders from new president
to spark lawsuit every time
Lawyer lining up plaintiff groups
until citizenship dispute addressed
---------------------------------------------------------------
Posted: November 25, 2008
9:18 pm Eastern
By Bob Unruh
---------------------------------------------------------------
WorldNetDaily
A lawyer who is playing a key role in a California lawsuit urging officials to prevent the state's 55 Electoral College votes from being recorded for Barack Obama until questions about his citizenship are resolved says he's organizing plans to challenge, even after the inauguration, every order, every proposal, every piece of paperwork generated by Obama.
Barack Obama
"We will file lawsuits on his actions, every time. As long as we have money , we will keep filing lawsuits until we get a decision as to his citizenship status," Gary Kreep, chief of the United States Justice Foundation, told WND today.
"We're already talking to groups who are willing to be plaintiffs," he said.
As WND reported, Kreep filed the California challenge with presidential candidate Alan Keyes as a plaintiff.
The complaint urges the California secretary of state to refuse to allow the state's 55 Electoral College votes to be cast until Obama's citizenship and related eligibility to hold office is resolved.
It is just one of more than a dozen legal challenges brought forward so far over Obama's citizenship. The cases all cite Obama's clouded history and the U.S. Constitution's requirement that a president be a "natural-born" citizen .
There have been allegations he was born in Kenya, not Hawaii as his campaign has reported, that he could be considered a British subject because of his father's residency in what then was a British protectorate that later became Kenya, and that the "Certificate of Live Birth" posted on his website simply shows his mother registered his birth in Hawaii after he was born but does not document a location.
Alan Keyes
There also have been questions raised about his travels as a youth, including the years he spent registered as a Muslim in an Indonesian school, and his later travels to Pakistan at a time when U.S. passports weren't welcome in that nation.
WND senior reporter Jerome Corsi traveled to Kenya and Hawaii prior to the election to investigate issues surrounding Obama's birth. But his research and discoveries only raised more questions.
The biggest question is why Obama, if a Hawaii birth certificate exists, simply hasn't ordered it made available to settle the rumors.
The governor's office in Hawaii said there is a valid certificate but rejected requests for access and left ambiguous its origin: Does the certificate on file with the Department of Health indicate a Hawaii birth or was it generated after the Obama family registered a Kenyan birth in Hawaii?
Obama's half-sister, Maya Soetoro, has named two different Hawaii hospitals where Obama could have been born, while a video posted on YouTube features Obama's Kenyan grandmother Sarah claiming to have witnessed Obama's birth in Kenya.
The California action was filed on behalf of Keyes, as well as Wiley S. Drake and Markham Robinson, both California electors.
"Should Senator Obama be discovered, after he takes office, to be ineligible for the Office of President of the United States of America and, thereby, his election declared void, Petitioners, as well as other Americans, will suffer irreparable harm in that (a) usurper will be sitting as the President of the United States, and none of the treaties, laws, or executive orders signed by him will be valid or legal," the action challenges.
Kreep told WND today he's now working with several groups that could serve as plaintiffs to challenge Obama's actions, even from the Oval Office, should the issue remain in dispute.
Do you agree with the agenda for the upcoming Obama White House as outlined in "The Audacity of Deceit?"
"There is a reasonable and common expectation by the voters that to qualify for the ballot, the individuals running for office must meet minimum qualifications as outlined in the federal and state Constitutions and statutes, and that compliance with those minimum qualifications has been confirmed by the officials overseeing the election process," the complaint said, when in fact the only documentation currently required is a signed statement from the candidate attesting to those qualifications.
The issue is much more important than a single candidate, said Judge Roy Moore, the former chief justice of the Alabama Supreme Court and a WND columnist. He now runs the Foundation for Moral Law.
Moore had his own constitutional confrontation when he was removed from his position Alabama Supreme Court chief justice after he refused to remove from state grounds a monument recognizing the Ten Commandments as the foundation for U.S. law.
"We can survive four years of any president; we cannot survive without a Constitution," he told WND. "This calls for a major investigation. Our Constitution is at stake."
Moore said the requirement for a president to be a natural-born citizen is clear in the Constitution. The document, he added, provides procedures to amend the requirement, but that hasn't been done.
"We live under the rule of law," he warned, "If we start ignoring that. ..."
A WND reader agreed in a letter to the editor.
"If Obama is allowed to take office without proving his citizenship, then we have no Constitution. America as it's been will be dead. If an easy to understand rule is ignored, then the others harder to understand will be easy to ignore," wrote Tony Costello.
Moore said, "If a person is not qualified, he's not qualified. It doesn't matter who it is, Republican, Democrat, black or white, rich or poor."
He added the members of the Electoral College have an obligation to verify Obama's qualifications before voting for him.
But he said the dispute may end up with court action, too.
"The courts are there to uphold the law. People have a right to change the Constitution. But until then it's the rule of law," he said.
"I don't see any reason a candidate who has such a serious question would not come forward with the truth about where he was born," Moore said.
"The Supreme Court has to answer this. They have to do it by law and not by the popularity of a person. If we do that, we might as well throw the Constitution out the window," Moore said.
"[Obama] has the answer. He knows where he was born. If he tells something that's untrue that's another matter. It's not an Obama issue, it's an American issue. It's about the Constitution of the United States."
U.S. State Department officials declined to respond to WND inquiries about the process for keeping a U.S. citizenship while attending schools in Indonesia, or the possibility of a U.S. citizen keeping that status while traveling on another nation's passport.
But several online "fact" sites have reported that the concerns over Obama's citizenship are much ado about nothing.
Factcheck.org, for example, has posted an image described as Obama's "birth certificate." But within the image can be seen the words "Certificate of Live Birth," which is not the same document. In Hawaii at the time Obama was born the state would issue a "Certificate of Live Birth" to a parent registering a birth, but it does not indicate the location of the birth.
"FactCheck.org staffers have now seen, touched, examined and photographed the original birth certificate," the group said in a statement accompanying the image of the "Certificate of Live Birth."
Snopes, also, attested to Obama's U.S. citizenship, citing information from the campaign itself.
However, WND columnist Janet Porter, who has investigated the dispute, wrote in her column today that there are too many questions to ignore.
"In Hawaii, a Certification of Live Birth is issued within a year of a child's birth to those who register a birth abroad or one that takes place outside a hospital," she said.
She cited the work of Ron Polarik, who holds a Ph.D. in instructional media and specializes in computer graphics with over 20 years experience with computers, printers and typewriters.
"Polarik has submitted a signed affidavit and has now released his findings on video at www.ObamaForgery.com with his identity masked and voice altered to guard against the carrying out of threats, which he has already received," Porter wrote.
"The Summary: The Certificate of Live Birth documents posted on Mr. Obama's website www.fightthesmears.com, Daily Kos (a pro-Obama blog) and factcheck.org, (a pro-Obama political research group), were found to be altered and forged," she said.
The researcher cited problems with pixels in the image and a fold line and a blurry border. He asserts the border is a 2007 version while the seal and signature are from 2008.
Be sure to sign the petition demanding evidence of Barack Obama's constitutional qualifications.
She also cited issues beyond the birth certificate.
"There's the matter that Obama traveled to Indonesia, Pakistan, Southern India and Kenya in 1981. He said he went to Indonesia to see his mother. This seemed plausible, except for the fact that his mother returned to Hawaii in August of 1980 to file for a divorce from her second husband, Lolo Soetoro. Unless she went back to pal around with the man she divorced, she wasn't there at the time of Obama's visit," Porter wrote.
"There's another problem. No record of Obama holding an American passport prior to the one he received once becoming a U.S. senator has been found. If he traveled to Pakistan with an American passport, he wouldn't have been allowed in – since Pakistan was in turmoil in 1981 and under martial law. It was also on the State Department's travel ban list for U.S. citizens," she wrote.
"If he couldn't get into Pakistan with a U.S. passport, perhaps he went there with an Indonesian passport. But the only way you can get one of those is if you are an Indonesian citizen," she wrote.
Porter encouraged residents to contact the members of the House Judiciary Committee with a request to hold congressional hearings and write to the U.S. Supreme Court to request a ruling.
On the FederalistBlog the writers concluded:
"A child born to an American mother and alien father could be said to be a citizen of the United States by some affirmative act of law but never entitled to be a natural-born citizen because through laws of nature the child inherits the condition of their father."
Obama's mother held U.S. citizenship, but his father never did.
WND also reported that Herb Titus, the Constitution Party's running mate to Howard Phillips in 1996 and recognized authority on the U.S. Constitution, said it is up the electors from the 50 states to make certain Obama is a natural-born U.S. citizen before they cast votes for him in the Electoral College Dec. 15.
"If they do their duty, they would make sure that if they cast a vote for Mr. Obama, that Mr. Obama is a natural-born citizen," he told WND.
"I think it should be resolved. The duty is in the Electoral College. Every Obama elector that is committed to casting a vote on the 15th of December, they have a constitutional duty to make certain whether Mr. Obama is a natural-born citizen," he said.
If the electors fail their duty and Obama proves ultimately to fail the eligibility requirement of the U.S. Constitution, there would be only the laborious, contentious and cumbersome process of impeachment available to those who would wish to follow the Constitution, he suggested.
On WND's new forum page, the level of frustration was rising. Dozens contributed their thoughts immediately after the forum was posted:
"What makes Obama non-respon[sive] to the simplest of requests?" asked one reader. "Does he think that it is politically incorrect to ask for authentication of the myriad of facts about himself … Is he testing the grounds to see how far he can play with this charade?"
Other comments included:
"Obama won his first election ever by getting three Democratic opponents thrown off the ballot? He's all for using the law to help himself win. Wouldn't it be ironic if he is not allowed to serve as president due to the law? … Turn around is fair play!
"Even the left-wing liberal news media is beginning to ask the question: 'Who is this man we have elected? We really do not know much about him.'"
"Obama's refusal to produce the ORIGINAL given birth certificate gives us all pause. His silence on these allegations is deafening. The anointed one believes that if he can hold us all back until he's in the Oval Office he's hit a home run and he's 'safe.' Ah, not so! Check your law, Obama, and you will see that even if were to make it to the White House you will no longer be able to hide behind those red velvet ropes."
"There must be something that would have caused him great harm prior to the election, and would have stopped him from becoming elected. What could that little piece of information be?"
---------------------------------------------------------------
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Tuesday, November 25, 2008
WorldNetDaily Exclusive
Orders from new president
to spark lawsuit every time
Lawyer lining up plaintiff groups
until citizenship dispute addressed
---------------------------------------------------------------
Posted: November 25, 2008
9:18 pm Eastern
By Bob Unruh
---------------------------------------------------------------
WorldNetDaily
A lawyer who is playing a key role in a California lawsuit urging officials to prevent the state's 55 Electoral College votes from being recorded for Barack Obama until questions about his citizenship are resolved says he's organizing plans to challenge, even after the inauguration, every order, every proposal, every piece of paperwork generated by Obama.
Barack Obama
"We will file lawsuits on his actions, every time. As long as we have money , we will keep filing lawsuits until we get a decision as to his citizenship status," Gary Kreep, chief of the United States Justice Foundation, told WND today.
"We're already talking to groups who are willing to be plaintiffs," he said.
As WND reported, Kreep filed the California challenge with presidential candidate Alan Keyes as a plaintiff.
The complaint urges the California secretary of state to refuse to allow the state's 55 Electoral College votes to be cast until Obama's citizenship and related eligibility to hold office is resolved.
It is just one of more than a dozen legal challenges brought forward so far over Obama's citizenship. The cases all cite Obama's clouded history and the U.S. Constitution's requirement that a president be a "natural-born" citizen .
There have been allegations he was born in Kenya, not Hawaii as his campaign has reported, that he could be considered a British subject because of his father's residency in what then was a British protectorate that later became Kenya, and that the "Certificate of Live Birth" posted on his website simply shows his mother registered his birth in Hawaii after he was born but does not document a location.
Alan Keyes
There also have been questions raised about his travels as a youth, including the years he spent registered as a Muslim in an Indonesian school, and his later travels to Pakistan at a time when U.S. passports weren't welcome in that nation.
WND senior reporter Jerome Corsi traveled to Kenya and Hawaii prior to the election to investigate issues surrounding Obama's birth. But his research and discoveries only raised more questions.
The biggest question is why Obama, if a Hawaii birth certificate exists, simply hasn't ordered it made available to settle the rumors.
The governor's office in Hawaii said there is a valid certificate but rejected requests for access and left ambiguous its origin: Does the certificate on file with the Department of Health indicate a Hawaii birth or was it generated after the Obama family registered a Kenyan birth in Hawaii?
Obama's half-sister, Maya Soetoro, has named two different Hawaii hospitals where Obama could have been born, while a video posted on YouTube features Obama's Kenyan grandmother Sarah claiming to have witnessed Obama's birth in Kenya.
The California action was filed on behalf of Keyes, as well as Wiley S. Drake and Markham Robinson, both California electors.
"Should Senator Obama be discovered, after he takes office, to be ineligible for the Office of President of the United States of America and, thereby, his election declared void, Petitioners, as well as other Americans, will suffer irreparable harm in that (a) usurper will be sitting as the President of the United States, and none of the treaties, laws, or executive orders signed by him will be valid or legal," the action challenges.
Kreep told WND today he's now working with several groups that could serve as plaintiffs to challenge Obama's actions, even from the Oval Office, should the issue remain in dispute.
Do you agree with the agenda for the upcoming Obama White House as outlined in "The Audacity of Deceit?"
"There is a reasonable and common expectation by the voters that to qualify for the ballot, the individuals running for office must meet minimum qualifications as outlined in the federal and state Constitutions and statutes, and that compliance with those minimum qualifications has been confirmed by the officials overseeing the election process," the complaint said, when in fact the only documentation currently required is a signed statement from the candidate attesting to those qualifications.
The issue is much more important than a single candidate, said Judge Roy Moore, the former chief justice of the Alabama Supreme Court and a WND columnist. He now runs the Foundation for Moral Law.
Moore had his own constitutional confrontation when he was removed from his position Alabama Supreme Court chief justice after he refused to remove from state grounds a monument recognizing the Ten Commandments as the foundation for U.S. law.
"We can survive four years of any president; we cannot survive without a Constitution," he told WND. "This calls for a major investigation. Our Constitution is at stake."
Moore said the requirement for a president to be a natural-born citizen is clear in the Constitution. The document, he added, provides procedures to amend the requirement, but that hasn't been done.
"We live under the rule of law," he warned, "If we start ignoring that. ..."
A WND reader agreed in a letter to the editor.
"If Obama is allowed to take office without proving his citizenship, then we have no Constitution. America as it's been will be dead. If an easy to understand rule is ignored, then the others harder to understand will be easy to ignore," wrote Tony Costello.
Moore said, "If a person is not qualified, he's not qualified. It doesn't matter who it is, Republican, Democrat, black or white, rich or poor."
He added the members of the Electoral College have an obligation to verify Obama's qualifications before voting for him.
But he said the dispute may end up with court action, too.
"The courts are there to uphold the law. People have a right to change the Constitution. But until then it's the rule of law," he said.
"I don't see any reason a candidate who has such a serious question would not come forward with the truth about where he was born," Moore said.
"The Supreme Court has to answer this. They have to do it by law and not by the popularity of a person. If we do that, we might as well throw the Constitution out the window," Moore said.
"[Obama] has the answer. He knows where he was born. If he tells something that's untrue that's another matter. It's not an Obama issue, it's an American issue. It's about the Constitution of the United States."
U.S. State Department officials declined to respond to WND inquiries about the process for keeping a U.S. citizenship while attending schools in Indonesia, or the possibility of a U.S. citizen keeping that status while traveling on another nation's passport.
But several online "fact" sites have reported that the concerns over Obama's citizenship are much ado about nothing.
Factcheck.org, for example, has posted an image described as Obama's "birth certificate." But within the image can be seen the words "Certificate of Live Birth," which is not the same document. In Hawaii at the time Obama was born the state would issue a "Certificate of Live Birth" to a parent registering a birth, but it does not indicate the location of the birth.
"FactCheck.org staffers have now seen, touched, examined and photographed the original birth certificate," the group said in a statement accompanying the image of the "Certificate of Live Birth."
Snopes, also, attested to Obama's U.S. citizenship, citing information from the campaign itself.
However, WND columnist Janet Porter, who has investigated the dispute, wrote in her column today that there are too many questions to ignore.
"In Hawaii, a Certification of Live Birth is issued within a year of a child's birth to those who register a birth abroad or one that takes place outside a hospital," she said.
She cited the work of Ron Polarik, who holds a Ph.D. in instructional media and specializes in computer graphics with over 20 years experience with computers, printers and typewriters.
"Polarik has submitted a signed affidavit and has now released his findings on video at www.ObamaForgery.com with his identity masked and voice altered to guard against the carrying out of threats, which he has already received," Porter wrote.
"The Summary: The Certificate of Live Birth documents posted on Mr. Obama's website www.fightthesmears.com, Daily Kos (a pro-Obama blog) and factcheck.org, (a pro-Obama political research group), were found to be altered and forged," she said.
The researcher cited problems with pixels in the image and a fold line and a blurry border. He asserts the border is a 2007 version while the seal and signature are from 2008.
Be sure to sign the petition demanding evidence of Barack Obama's constitutional qualifications.
She also cited issues beyond the birth certificate.
"There's the matter that Obama traveled to Indonesia, Pakistan, Southern India and Kenya in 1981. He said he went to Indonesia to see his mother. This seemed plausible, except for the fact that his mother returned to Hawaii in August of 1980 to file for a divorce from her second husband, Lolo Soetoro. Unless she went back to pal around with the man she divorced, she wasn't there at the time of Obama's visit," Porter wrote.
"There's another problem. No record of Obama holding an American passport prior to the one he received once becoming a U.S. senator has been found. If he traveled to Pakistan with an American passport, he wouldn't have been allowed in – since Pakistan was in turmoil in 1981 and under martial law. It was also on the State Department's travel ban list for U.S. citizens," she wrote.
"If he couldn't get into Pakistan with a U.S. passport, perhaps he went there with an Indonesian passport. But the only way you can get one of those is if you are an Indonesian citizen," she wrote.
Porter encouraged residents to contact the members of the House Judiciary Committee with a request to hold congressional hearings and write to the U.S. Supreme Court to request a ruling.
On the FederalistBlog the writers concluded:
"A child born to an American mother and alien father could be said to be a citizen of the United States by some affirmative act of law but never entitled to be a natural-born citizen because through laws of nature the child inherits the condition of their father."
Obama's mother held U.S. citizenship, but his father never did.
WND also reported that Herb Titus, the Constitution Party's running mate to Howard Phillips in 1996 and recognized authority on the U.S. Constitution, said it is up the electors from the 50 states to make certain Obama is a natural-born U.S. citizen before they cast votes for him in the Electoral College Dec. 15.
"If they do their duty, they would make sure that if they cast a vote for Mr. Obama, that Mr. Obama is a natural-born citizen," he told WND.
"I think it should be resolved. The duty is in the Electoral College. Every Obama elector that is committed to casting a vote on the 15th of December, they have a constitutional duty to make certain whether Mr. Obama is a natural-born citizen," he said.
If the electors fail their duty and Obama proves ultimately to fail the eligibility requirement of the U.S. Constitution, there would be only the laborious, contentious and cumbersome process of impeachment available to those who would wish to follow the Constitution, he suggested.
On WND's new forum page, the level of frustration was rising. Dozens contributed their thoughts immediately after the forum was posted:
"What makes Obama non-respon[sive] to the simplest of requests?" asked one reader. "Does he think that it is politically incorrect to ask for authentication of the myriad of facts about himself … Is he testing the grounds to see how far he can play with this charade?"
Other comments included:
"Obama won his first election ever by getting three Democratic opponents thrown off the ballot? He's all for using the law to help himself win. Wouldn't it be ironic if he is not allowed to serve as president due to the law? … Turn around is fair play!
"Even the left-wing liberal news media is beginning to ask the question: 'Who is this man we have elected? We really do not know much about him.'"
"Obama's refusal to produce the ORIGINAL given birth certificate gives us all pause. His silence on these allegations is deafening. The anointed one believes that if he can hold us all back until he's in the Oval Office he's hit a home run and he's 'safe.' Ah, not so! Check your law, Obama, and you will see that even if were to make it to the White House you will no longer be able to hide behind those red velvet ropes."
"There must be something that would have caused him great harm prior to the election, and would have stopped him from becoming elected. What could that little piece of information be?"
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Tuesday, November 25, 2008
More news about Obama's (fake) birth certificate!
Great video: Dr. Ron Polarik explains how the fake Obama birth certificate was produced
[NOTE: The article above misspells the name of Dr. Ron Polarik, probably due to the muffled quality of the audio...]
Call to action: Orly Taitz, lawyer representing Alan Keyes in his lawsuit to have Obama declared ineligible
[NOTE: The article above misspells the name of Dr. Ron Polarik, probably due to the muffled quality of the audio...]
Call to action: Orly Taitz, lawyer representing Alan Keyes in his lawsuit to have Obama declared ineligible
Labels:
Alan Keyes,
birth certificate,
Obama,
President,
Ron Polarik
Monday, November 24, 2008
Even trees get dragged into all the bullshit
Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi will light an “energy-efficient” Christmas tree at the Capitol this week. It will be draped with environmentally correct LED lights, according to The Hill.
Speakin' of trees, you gotta watch this! (It's short.)
Speakin' of trees, you gotta watch this! (It's short.)
Labels:
Christmas,
Earth First,
environmentalism,
Nancy Pelosi,
trees,
White House
Sunday, November 23, 2008
The Invisible Man
The Obama Paper Trail - or Lack of It ….
November 23, 2008 by Cat Wrangler
Obama has lived for 48 years without leaving any footprints — none! There is no Obama documentation — no records — no paper trail — none — this can’t be an accident.
Original, vault copy birth certificate — Not released
Certificate of Live Birth — Released — counterfeit
Obama/Dunham marriage license — Not released
Soetoro/Dunham marriage license — Not released
Soetoro adoption records — Not released
Fransiskus Assisi School School application — Released
Punahou School records — Not released
Selective Service Registration — Released — counterfeit
Occidental College records — Not released
Passport (Pakistan) — Not released
Columbia College records — Not released
Columbia thesis — Not released
Harvard College records — Not released
Harvard Law Review articles — None (maybe 1, unsigned?)
Baptism certificate — None
Medical records — Not released
Illinois State Senate records — None
Illinois State Senate schedule — Lost
Law practice client list — Not released
University of Chicago scholarly articles — None
November 23, 2008 by Cat Wrangler
Obama has lived for 48 years without leaving any footprints — none! There is no Obama documentation — no records — no paper trail — none — this can’t be an accident.
Original, vault copy birth certificate — Not released
Certificate of Live Birth — Released — counterfeit
Obama/Dunham marriage license — Not released
Soetoro/Dunham marriage license — Not released
Soetoro adoption records — Not released
Fransiskus Assisi School School application — Released
Punahou School records — Not released
Selective Service Registration — Released — counterfeit
Occidental College records — Not released
Passport (Pakistan) — Not released
Columbia College records — Not released
Columbia thesis — Not released
Harvard College records — Not released
Harvard Law Review articles — None (maybe 1, unsigned?)
Baptism certificate — None
Medical records — Not released
Illinois State Senate records — None
Illinois State Senate schedule — Lost
Law practice client list — Not released
University of Chicago scholarly articles — None
Kenyan Ambassador Peter Ogego - Obama born in Kenya
11/6/08 - WRIF Michigan Radio Talk Show calls Kenyan Ambassador, His Excellency Peter Ogego, and asks if there will be a marker put up at Obama's birthplace. Ogego responds, "It's already well known!" Some people don't believe it's real. Mike from the Mike In The Morning says, "It's 100% real." Listen for yourself here - http://my.wrif.com/mim/?p=916 (It's a long audio and they don't ask him until the end.) HAT TIP - http://americamustknow.com/
So now it's him and Obama's grandmother who say he was born in Kenya.
So now it's him and Obama's grandmother who say he was born in Kenya.
A Letter from GrandDad
Guess you heard that 68% of "the youth vote" went to Obama. My granddaughter called this morning to tell me she was one of them. I replied with this e-mail:
The election of Obama comes down to this: your grandmother and I, your mother,and other productive wage earning tax payers will have their taxes increased and that means less income. Less income means we will have to cut back on basic purchases, gifts, and handouts. That includes firing the Hispanic lady who cleans our house twice a month. She just lost her job. We can't afford her anymore.
What is the economic effect of Obama's election on you personally? Over the years,your grandmother and I have given you thousands of dollars in food, housing, cash,clothing, gifts, etc., etc. By your vote, you have chosen another family over ours for help. So in the future, if you need assistance with your rent, money for gas, tires for you car,someone to bring you lunch, etc.... call 202-456-1111. That's the telephone number for the Office of the President of the United States. I'm sure Mr. Obama will be happy to send a check from his personal or business accounts or leave cash in an envelope taped to his front door.
It's like this. Those who vote for the president should consider what the impact of an election will be on the nation as a whole and not just be concerned with what they can get for themselves(welfare, etc.). What Obama voters don't seem to realize is that the government's money comes from taxes collected from tax paying families. Raising taxes on productive people means they will have less money to spend on their families.
Congratulations on your choice. For future reference, you might attempt to add up all you've received from us, your mom, Mike's parents, and others and compare it to what you expect to get over the next four years from Mr. Obama.
To congratulate Mr. Obama and to make sure you're on the list for handouts, write to:
The White House 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. NW Washington , DC 20500
Love you dear, but call the number listed above when you need help.
Granddad
The election of Obama comes down to this: your grandmother and I, your mother,and other productive wage earning tax payers will have their taxes increased and that means less income. Less income means we will have to cut back on basic purchases, gifts, and handouts. That includes firing the Hispanic lady who cleans our house twice a month. She just lost her job. We can't afford her anymore.
What is the economic effect of Obama's election on you personally? Over the years,your grandmother and I have given you thousands of dollars in food, housing, cash,clothing, gifts, etc., etc. By your vote, you have chosen another family over ours for help. So in the future, if you need assistance with your rent, money for gas, tires for you car,someone to bring you lunch, etc.... call 202-456-1111. That's the telephone number for the Office of the President of the United States. I'm sure Mr. Obama will be happy to send a check from his personal or business accounts or leave cash in an envelope taped to his front door.
It's like this. Those who vote for the president should consider what the impact of an election will be on the nation as a whole and not just be concerned with what they can get for themselves(welfare, etc.). What Obama voters don't seem to realize is that the government's money comes from taxes collected from tax paying families. Raising taxes on productive people means they will have less money to spend on their families.
Congratulations on your choice. For future reference, you might attempt to add up all you've received from us, your mom, Mike's parents, and others and compare it to what you expect to get over the next four years from Mr. Obama.
To congratulate Mr. Obama and to make sure you're on the list for handouts, write to:
The White House 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. NW Washington , DC 20500
Love you dear, but call the number listed above when you need help.
Granddad
Townhall blogger Ron Polarik, PhD just published breakthrough report
I first noticed that the image posted to the Daily Kos and purported to be the "original birth certificate" of Barack H. Obama, did not look like a regular birth certificate. This image was made only from the front side of a COLB: no copy of the reverse side of this COLB has ever been made, :birth certificate" document was ever scanned, a side that contains all of the official certification instruments, such as the official Hawaiian Seal, State Registrar's signature, and date stamp of when the document was printed.
To validate my findings that the text in this COLB document image was the result of graphic alternations, and not a result of any printer or scanner artifacts, I made over 700 test scans and images using an actual paper COLB and different scanners that were subjected to different combinations of scanning and image parameters. I was finally able to replicate the Kos image so closely that other image experts thought it was the same Kos image, and not my "clone."
From this date forward, when I first discovered the evidence of tampering, and regardless of the unfamiliar format of the COLB and the questionable information it contained, I collected a great deal of additional evidence, that the scanned image alleged to be a true copy of Obama's original COLB was forged, and that this altered image of an official state-issued document is nothing less than a false identification document as defined by Chapter 18, Section 1028 of the United States Code.
All of my findings pertaining to a single source image and the four copies made from of it that are still posted on the four (4) websites, DAILYKOS.COM, FIGHTTHESMEARS.COM, FACTCHECK.ORG, and POLITIFACT.COM, as referred to and described above, are outlined in my Final Report
With all that said, and without further ado, I present to you my final and complete report on Barack Obama's bogus birth certificate, The Born Conspiracy - http://tinyurl.com/6euf2o
To validate my findings that the text in this COLB document image was the result of graphic alternations, and not a result of any printer or scanner artifacts, I made over 700 test scans and images using an actual paper COLB and different scanners that were subjected to different combinations of scanning and image parameters. I was finally able to replicate the Kos image so closely that other image experts thought it was the same Kos image, and not my "clone."
From this date forward, when I first discovered the evidence of tampering, and regardless of the unfamiliar format of the COLB and the questionable information it contained, I collected a great deal of additional evidence, that the scanned image alleged to be a true copy of Obama's original COLB was forged, and that this altered image of an official state-issued document is nothing less than a false identification document as defined by Chapter 18, Section 1028 of the United States Code.
All of my findings pertaining to a single source image and the four copies made from of it that are still posted on the four (4) websites, DAILYKOS.COM, FIGHTTHESMEARS.COM, FACTCHECK.ORG, and POLITIFACT.COM, as referred to and described above, are outlined in my Final Report
With all that said, and without further ado, I present to you my final and complete report on Barack Obama's bogus birth certificate, The Born Conspiracy - http://tinyurl.com/6euf2o
Labels:
birth certificate,
Obama,
President,
Ron Polarik,
Townhall
First affirmative action President?
Obama was the first African-American to be elected President of the Harvard Law Review in 1990. Obama's tenure as Law Review President was not without controversy. Indeed, an unusually low number of women were selected to be Review editors from the class of 1992, leading to considerable debate about the Law Review's selection policies and the importance of its affirmative action program, which at the time, was limited to consideration of race and physical handicap.Read more
Obama personally responded to the controversy by writing a lengthy letter explaining both the Review's selection policy and his personal experience with affirmative action. The letter was published in Volume 91, Number 7 (November 16, 1990) of the Harvard Law Record. It is reprinted below in its entirety.
A.K.
Labels:
affirmative action,
Obama,
President,
U.S. Presidents
More questions about Obama's birth
While reviewing Bob Unruh's article in WND in regard to the lawsuits for the birth certificate. I came across this paragraph.(see below)
"Hawaii Revised Statute 338-178 allows registration of birth in Hawaii for a child that was born outside of Hawaii to parents who, for a year preceding the child's birth, claimed Hawaii as their place of residence," the document said. "The only way to know where Senator Obama was actually born is to view Senator Obama's original birth certificate from 1961 that shows the name of the hospital and the name and signature of the doctor that delivered him."
HOW COULD STANLEY ANN DUNHAM HAVE DELIVERED BARACK HUSSEIN OBAMA JR. IN AUGUST OF 1961 IN HONOLULU, WHEN OFFICIAL UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON RECORDS SHOW HER 2680 MILES AWAY IN SEATTLE ATTENDING CLASSES THAT SAME MONTH?
"Hawaii Revised Statute 338-178 allows registration of birth in Hawaii for a child that was born outside of Hawaii to parents who, for a year preceding the child's birth, claimed Hawaii as their place of residence," the document said. "The only way to know where Senator Obama was actually born is to view Senator Obama's original birth certificate from 1961 that shows the name of the hospital and the name and signature of the doctor that delivered him."
HOW COULD STANLEY ANN DUNHAM HAVE DELIVERED BARACK HUSSEIN OBAMA JR. IN AUGUST OF 1961 IN HONOLULU, WHEN OFFICIAL UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON RECORDS SHOW HER 2680 MILES AWAY IN SEATTLE ATTENDING CLASSES THAT SAME MONTH?
Labels:
birth certificate,
Hawaii,
Obama,
President,
Stanley Ann Dunham
Saturday, November 22, 2008
A nation of thieves
I don't believe any moral case can be made for the forcible use of one person to serve the purposes of another. But that conclusion is not nearly as important as the fact that so many of my fellow Americans give wide support to using people. I would like to think it is because they haven't considered that more than $2 trillion of the over $3 trillion federal budget represents Americans using one another.Read more
Ted Nugent rocks!
It is a defining indicator that the embarrassing, self inflicted dumbing down of America is all but complete when people vote against their own self-interest.Read more
I'll say it: it is obvious that many Americans are not very smart. Quite dumb, actually. To listen to the Sirius radio interview with Obama voters from Harlem mindlessly cheering on Obama as the interviewer attributes McCain's policies to the Democrats is pathetic and an inescapable indicator of the blind leading the blind. Not Godbless or goddam America! God help America.
Friday, November 21, 2008
Who killed the U.S. auto industry?
Who killed the U.S. auto industry?Read more
To hear the media tell it, arrogant corporate chiefs failed to foresee the demand for small, fuel-efficient cars and made gas-guzzling road-hog SUVs no one wanted, while the clever, far-sighted Japanese, Germans and Koreans prepared and built for the future.
I dissent. What killed Detroit was Washington, the government of the United States, politicians, journalists and muckrakers who have long harbored a deep animus against the manufacturing class that ran the smokestack industries that won World War II.
Thursday, November 20, 2008
Wednesday, November 19, 2008
3 things
If you only know three things that Sarah Palin has accomplished as Governor of Alaska, it should be these three:
- Gov. Palin is a proven fiscal conservative who used her line-item veto to slash hundreds of millions of dollars in spending from the state budget.
- Gov. Palin kept her campaign promise to revamp the state's pre-existing severance tax on oil & gas production, replacing a structure negotiated behind closed doors by ethically challenged predecessors and the big energy companies with one negotiated in full public view — and then rebated part of the resulting surplus directly to tax-payers.
- Gov. Palin broke a multi-year stalemate over the financing and construction of a $40 billion cross-state gas pipeline that will deliver cleaner, cheaper natural gas to Alaska's own population centers (Alaskans themselves pay some of the nation's highest energy prices), while also delivering gas to the energy-hungry Lower 48.
Cold, hard facts
Climate Change: Despite record snows and low temperatures around the world last month, a major Al Gore supporter says October was the hottest on record. The only thing being cooked here is not the Earth, but the books.Read more
Labels:
Al Gore,
global cooling,
global warming,
James Hansen
Creative destruction at risk
...as a general matter, the rest of the world will be hit harder than the U.S. Indeed, the U.S. retains a great advantage over the rest of the world -- its belief in "creative destruction." As long as the U.S. retains this belief, it will be the leader in innovation, which Ferguson sees as the key to recovery and long term prosperity. However, the push towards regulation and bailouts suggests a loss of faith in "creative destructive." In reality, though, it's wrong in general to blame the current difficulties on lack of regulation. In the 1970s, the last period of serious economic distress, the U.S. economy was heavily regulated, and regulation contributed in some instances to the current situation.Read more
Tuesday, November 18, 2008
Monday, November 17, 2008
The Talking Trap: Afghan Follies
Posted: 4:11 am
November 13, 2008
NEGOTIATIONS are the heroin of the chattering classes, blinding them to every reality except the next fix they can inject into our foreign policy. The pushers - our delighted enemies - pile up strategic profits.
Certainly, there are situations in which negotiations make sense, such as structuring trade terms or defining alliance contributions. But the notion that, if only we can sit down with our enemies, we'll inevitably persuade them to love us is a deadly self-delusion.
There's a looming danger that President-elect Obama's naive and profoundly anti-military cadres will misinterpret Gen. David Petraeus' tactic of opening communications with Taliban elements and seek to make talks the centerpiece of the new administration's Afghan policy. If so, we might as well pack up and leave now.
No American soldier should die just so diplomats can rack up frequent-flyer miles.
Read more
November 13, 2008
NEGOTIATIONS are the heroin of the chattering classes, blinding them to every reality except the next fix they can inject into our foreign policy. The pushers - our delighted enemies - pile up strategic profits.
Certainly, there are situations in which negotiations make sense, such as structuring trade terms or defining alliance contributions. But the notion that, if only we can sit down with our enemies, we'll inevitably persuade them to love us is a deadly self-delusion.
There's a looming danger that President-elect Obama's naive and profoundly anti-military cadres will misinterpret Gen. David Petraeus' tactic of opening communications with Taliban elements and seek to make talks the centerpiece of the new administration's Afghan policy. If so, we might as well pack up and leave now.
No American soldier should die just so diplomats can rack up frequent-flyer miles.
Read more
Saturday, November 15, 2008
This Administration’s shaping up to give President Grant’s a run for its money as the most corrupt in American history
...bad news for anyone who bought into that "Change You Can Believe" hokum.Read what some Chicago PUMA's have to say about this
Social Injustice in America
by Dick McDonald
America fails to educate its people. From grammar school to universities, from the streets to executive suites two generations of Americans have been taught that capitalism is basically an unfair economic system and that academe’s utopian solution of social justice is the answer.
Much of what the educators want is admirable and justifiable. It is the manner in which they want to achieve those goals that is socially and economically unjust. In fact it is downright collectively stupid. The means to their end is taxing the rich and productive and redistributing that wealth to the poor and unproductive. Of course they no longer call the poor “poor” but middle-class. It is a classical diversion of a failed political policy to use words to divert attention from the reality of their failure.
What kids need to learn; what they need is a course in taxation. What Americans don’t seem to get is that academe has steered Americans away from basic civics to social justice themes. Graduates have no idea how our country works economically –what the burdens these “socialists” want them to carry. Let’s take a simple example.
Jay Leno was interviewing Anderson Cooper on the tonight show this week. Cooper of CNN was gushing liberal social justice themes to which Leno replied that he would gladly pay more income taxes if the money got to the right people. Now dear reader what do you think Leno is doing today with the money he is planning to give to the government tomorrow? It is likely he is pouring it into his personal stock or bond portfolio. If he diverts that money from the people’s capital pool to the government he is destroying the funds the economy uses to create jobs and start businesses.
What Anderson Cooper failed to tell Jay Leno was the rest of the story - the serious depletion of the capital pool Barack and his mates have in mind. He and the liberal Congress is eyeing a big money contribution from the likes of Leno. If NBC is paying Jay $20 million a year the 4.5% increase from a top rate of 35% to 39.5% will only cost Jay an additional $900,000 – mere petty cash to the likes of Leno. What was not said is that Obama has promised to lift the cap on Social Security, Medicare payroll taxes which will cost Jay an additional $3.4 million dollars a year. That is $3.4 million dollar less for the capital pool to use to hire the “middle class”. And Jay is just one of millions of the “rich” that will be so impacted.
Obama promises to keep the Ponzi scheme known as Social Security and Medicare from bankruptcy by imposing this punishing 15.3% payroll tax on top of the 39.5% income tax rate. The “middle-class” has been convinced that is fair. What they fail to realize is that every action has a reaction going in the opposite direction with equal force. That tax will throw millions of Americans out of work. It will be a repeat of the 10-year depression of the 30’s when unemployment remained at double digits. You see the “rich” didn’t have the money to hire people – their capital pool was empty. The rest of the story is that Obama is taking us down the same drain hole.
So folks enjoy the euphoria of “the change people can believe in” because it has a short shelf life. It is built on the stupidity of those who think they can vote themselves a paycheck they didn’t work for. Obama’s words are temporarily most comforting “we are the people we have been waiting for” meaning ordinary people like Obama is what ordinary Americans have been waiting for. Unfortunately his policies will result in a pink slip for many Americans and a malaise in our economic engine just to send out that “social justice” welfare check.
For another way to skin that pig see www.riseupamerica.us – the “real” blueprint people have been waiting for. You can even download a free book Make the Poor Rich and America Wealthier.
America fails to educate its people. From grammar school to universities, from the streets to executive suites two generations of Americans have been taught that capitalism is basically an unfair economic system and that academe’s utopian solution of social justice is the answer.
Much of what the educators want is admirable and justifiable. It is the manner in which they want to achieve those goals that is socially and economically unjust. In fact it is downright collectively stupid. The means to their end is taxing the rich and productive and redistributing that wealth to the poor and unproductive. Of course they no longer call the poor “poor” but middle-class. It is a classical diversion of a failed political policy to use words to divert attention from the reality of their failure.
What kids need to learn; what they need is a course in taxation. What Americans don’t seem to get is that academe has steered Americans away from basic civics to social justice themes. Graduates have no idea how our country works economically –what the burdens these “socialists” want them to carry. Let’s take a simple example.
Jay Leno was interviewing Anderson Cooper on the tonight show this week. Cooper of CNN was gushing liberal social justice themes to which Leno replied that he would gladly pay more income taxes if the money got to the right people. Now dear reader what do you think Leno is doing today with the money he is planning to give to the government tomorrow? It is likely he is pouring it into his personal stock or bond portfolio. If he diverts that money from the people’s capital pool to the government he is destroying the funds the economy uses to create jobs and start businesses.
What Anderson Cooper failed to tell Jay Leno was the rest of the story - the serious depletion of the capital pool Barack and his mates have in mind. He and the liberal Congress is eyeing a big money contribution from the likes of Leno. If NBC is paying Jay $20 million a year the 4.5% increase from a top rate of 35% to 39.5% will only cost Jay an additional $900,000 – mere petty cash to the likes of Leno. What was not said is that Obama has promised to lift the cap on Social Security, Medicare payroll taxes which will cost Jay an additional $3.4 million dollars a year. That is $3.4 million dollar less for the capital pool to use to hire the “middle class”. And Jay is just one of millions of the “rich” that will be so impacted.
Obama promises to keep the Ponzi scheme known as Social Security and Medicare from bankruptcy by imposing this punishing 15.3% payroll tax on top of the 39.5% income tax rate. The “middle-class” has been convinced that is fair. What they fail to realize is that every action has a reaction going in the opposite direction with equal force. That tax will throw millions of Americans out of work. It will be a repeat of the 10-year depression of the 30’s when unemployment remained at double digits. You see the “rich” didn’t have the money to hire people – their capital pool was empty. The rest of the story is that Obama is taking us down the same drain hole.
So folks enjoy the euphoria of “the change people can believe in” because it has a short shelf life. It is built on the stupidity of those who think they can vote themselves a paycheck they didn’t work for. Obama’s words are temporarily most comforting “we are the people we have been waiting for” meaning ordinary people like Obama is what ordinary Americans have been waiting for. Unfortunately his policies will result in a pink slip for many Americans and a malaise in our economic engine just to send out that “social justice” welfare check.
For another way to skin that pig see www.riseupamerica.us – the “real” blueprint people have been waiting for. You can even download a free book Make the Poor Rich and America Wealthier.
Friday, November 14, 2008
Liberals clinically mad, concludes top psychiatrist
Eminent doctor makes case leftist ideology is a mental disorder
Dr. Rossiter says the liberal agenda preys on weakness and feelings of inferiority in the population by:Read more
- creating and reinforcing perceptions of victimization;
- satisfying infantile claims to entitlement, indulgence and compensation;
- augmenting primitive feelings of envy;
- rejecting the sovereignty of the individual, subordinating him to the will of the government.
Stop Blaming Capitalism for Government Failures
...while capitalism may be a convenient scapegoat, it did not cause any of these problems. Indeed, whatever one wishes to call the unruly mixture of freedom and government controls that made up our economic and political system during the last three decades, one cannot call it capitalism...America came closest to this system in the latter half of the nineteenth century. The result was an unprecedented explosion of wealth creation and consequent rise in the standard of living. Even now, when the fading remnants of capitalism are badly crippled by endless controls, we see that the freest countries--those which retain the most capitalist elements--have the highest standard of living...Why then should capitalism take the blame today--when capitalism doesn’t even exist?Find out here
Labels:
America,
Ayn Rand,
Capitalism,
collectivism,
economy
Legal challenges spring up across U.S., demand proof of eligibility for office
If you are "garbage" (a citizen who would like to really be sure who is really eligible to run for office here in the United States), then please ay particular attention to the information following "The saga continues …" in this article
Thursday, November 13, 2008
Obama's personal army...coming soon, to a neighborhood near you
“We can no longer rely on the military for our national security…a civilian force that is just as strong, just as powerful..." -- Barack Hussein Obama
Here's what is is.
Here's what it's gonna become.
Remember that sick to your stomach feeling you got at seeing the vids of the Obama Youth. The sick to your stomach feeling you got when you saw the Obama calls for a Gestapo vid? How it only got worse when you played it again and really listened? You didn’t feel that way for no reason. Your instincts were indeed telling you something, and reminding you of something...--Pat Dollard
Here's what is is.
Here's what it's gonna become.
Did Obama commit a federal crime earlier this year?
**** UPDATE #2, 11/14/08: Retired Federal Agent Source Reveals Himself:
The recently retired federal agent has requested that I disclose his identity so that there is no question as to the source of the information.
His name is Stephen Coffman. He retired last year from the position of the Resident Agent in Charge of Immigration and Customs Enforcement's (ICE) Galveston, Texas office. He has over 32 years of government service and has held a Secret or higher security clearance for the majority of those years.
He filed the FOIA with Selective Service and has the original letter and the attachments. He first notified the Selective Service of his findings and they ignored the questions.
http://www.debbieschlussel.com/archives/2008/11/exclusive_did_n.html
*************************************************
Debbie Schlussel, on her website, debbieschlussel.com, has a breaking story reported by Citizen Wells:
The recently retired federal agent has requested that I disclose his identity so that there is no question as to the source of the information.
His name is Stephen Coffman. He retired last year from the position of the Resident Agent in Charge of Immigration and Customs Enforcement's (ICE) Galveston, Texas office. He has over 32 years of government service and has held a Secret or higher security clearance for the majority of those years.
He filed the FOIA with Selective Service and has the original letter and the attachments. He first notified the Selective Service of his findings and they ignored the questions.
http://www.debbieschlussel.com/archives/2008/11/exclusive_did_n.html
*************************************************
Debbie Schlussel, on her website, debbieschlussel.com, has a breaking story reported by Citizen Wells:
“Did President-elect Barack Hussein Obama commit a federal crime in September of this year? Or did he never actually register and, instead, did friends of his in the Chicago federal records center, which maintains the official copy of his alleged Selective Service registration commit the crime for him?Find out here
Wednesday, November 12, 2008
The New New Deal
One reason the Depression lasted until World War II, as Paul Krugman argued this week in the New York Times, is that the New Dealers sabotaged their own plan.
With one hand the New Dealers gave, spending to stimulate the economy. In fact, they put through the same kinds of infrastructure projects that Obama and congressional Democrats are considering today.
With the other hand the New Dealers took away, by raising tax rates -- just as the new president and Congress are likely to do in 2009.
Especially damaging to the prospects of recovery were the heavy levies of the second half of the 1930s, which, as Krugman points out, were key in ``precipitating an economic relapse that drove unemployment back into the double digits.'' President Franklin D. Roosevelt specialized in persecuting the rich via taxes, telling the upper class, point blank, that they had ``met their master.''
Read more
With one hand the New Dealers gave, spending to stimulate the economy. In fact, they put through the same kinds of infrastructure projects that Obama and congressional Democrats are considering today.
With the other hand the New Dealers took away, by raising tax rates -- just as the new president and Congress are likely to do in 2009.
Especially damaging to the prospects of recovery were the heavy levies of the second half of the 1930s, which, as Krugman points out, were key in ``precipitating an economic relapse that drove unemployment back into the double digits.'' President Franklin D. Roosevelt specialized in persecuting the rich via taxes, telling the upper class, point blank, that they had ``met their master.''
Read more
Labels:
Franklin D. Roosevelt,
New Deal,
Obama,
Paul Krugman,
President
Tuesday, November 11, 2008
Obama 1, Labor 0
The first appointment in the wake of the Obama victory could not have been reassuring to the many thousands in the labor movement who deployed $400 million in this campaign to assure a Democratic victory. Rahm Emanuel, a Chicago congressman, was the key Clinton staffer behind the push for the North American Free Trade Agreement in 1993.Read more
Friday, November 07, 2008
What I learned from the 2008 presidential election
1) Race is more important than anything else.
During the next presidential election, we must put forward a candidate of a different race (in order to be fair now)--either Chinese, Japanese, Korean, American Indian, or?
2) Experience no longer matters. (Talent for public speaking is the only experience necessary!)
No one cared that Obama failed at the only thing he had been in charge of before he became President--the Chicago Annenburg Challenge (CAC). Although, to be fair, he was successful as a lawyer for ACORN when he sued Citibank to force them to give bad loans (loans to people who couldn't afford them). So, we must not only find a candidate of another race next time, but one who is head of a debate team.
3) Security clearance has taken on a new meaning.
No one (except some vocal ex-FBI agents who were free to speak) seemed to care that Obama would not have been able to pass a security clearance due to his associations throughout his past such as Khalid al-Mansour, Kenny Gamble (aka Luqman Abdul-Haqq), Mazen Asbahi, Minha Husaini, Tony Rezko, William Ayers, Bernardine Dohrn, Rashid Khalidi, Louis Farrakhan, Jeremiah Wright, CAIR, and Nation of Islam. Too bad Tim McVeigh wasn't around to run for President!
4) Citizens of the U.S. have no constitutional "standing" (we are not allowed to know anything about our candidates unless they feel like telling us).
Obama is the first presidental candidate who refused to produce medical records, college records, records from his 8 years as Illinois State Senator, and original birth certificate (in fact, he had it sealed in Hawaii before the election). Guess from now on it'll be ok to play a new version of Blind Man's Bluff where the country is, in effect, blindfolded so we can't really know who we are electing! (The audacity of wanting to know such things!)
Live and learn.
During the next presidential election, we must put forward a candidate of a different race (in order to be fair now)--either Chinese, Japanese, Korean, American Indian, or?
2) Experience no longer matters. (Talent for public speaking is the only experience necessary!)
No one cared that Obama failed at the only thing he had been in charge of before he became President--the Chicago Annenburg Challenge (CAC). Although, to be fair, he was successful as a lawyer for ACORN when he sued Citibank to force them to give bad loans (loans to people who couldn't afford them). So, we must not only find a candidate of another race next time, but one who is head of a debate team.
3) Security clearance has taken on a new meaning.
No one (except some vocal ex-FBI agents who were free to speak) seemed to care that Obama would not have been able to pass a security clearance due to his associations throughout his past such as Khalid al-Mansour, Kenny Gamble (aka Luqman Abdul-Haqq), Mazen Asbahi, Minha Husaini, Tony Rezko, William Ayers, Bernardine Dohrn, Rashid Khalidi, Louis Farrakhan, Jeremiah Wright, CAIR, and Nation of Islam. Too bad Tim McVeigh wasn't around to run for President!
4) Citizens of the U.S. have no constitutional "standing" (we are not allowed to know anything about our candidates unless they feel like telling us).
Obama is the first presidental candidate who refused to produce medical records, college records, records from his 8 years as Illinois State Senator, and original birth certificate (in fact, he had it sealed in Hawaii before the election). Guess from now on it'll be ok to play a new version of Blind Man's Bluff where the country is, in effect, blindfolded so we can't really know who we are electing! (The audacity of wanting to know such things!)
Live and learn.
Thursday, November 06, 2008
Quiz: True or False
Terrorists around the world (Cuba, Venezuela, Iran, Palestinian National Authority) applaud the election of Obama because:
a) They think that he will be sympathetic to them
b) They think he will fight them
c) I don't know
Yes, folks, the b) and c) crowd just fucked us in the you know what!
a) They think that he will be sympathetic to them
b) They think he will fight them
c) I don't know
Yes, folks, the b) and c) crowd just fucked us in the you know what!
Inverted, full mast
Tuesday, 4 November 2008, is a date which will live in infamy. While most presidential elections are followed with calls for unity by both candidates, Barack Obama issued no such call in his speech last night, with the possible exception of his observation, "I may not have won your vote tonight, but ... I will be your president, too."
Of course, none was expected -- liberals have elected a Socialist with deep ties to cultural and ethnocentric radicalism, and his executive and legislative agenda poses a greater threat to American liberty than that of any president in the history of our great republic.
Obama has twice taken an oath to "support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic" and to "bear true faith and allegiance to the same." He has never honored that oath, and, based on his policy proposals and objectives, he has no intention to honor it after again reciting that oath on 20 January 2009. Obama seeks to, in his own words, "break free from the essential constraints that were placed by the Founding Fathers in the Constitution."
For that reason, this morning, the symbol of our national heritage of liberty, the American flag atop the 35-foot mast at our editorial offices, was respectfully lowered, inverted, and raised to full mast as a sign of national distress. It will remain inverted until next Tuesday, when we right it in honor of Veterans Day.
Today, at least 55,805,197 Americans are concerned for the future of our nation's great tradition of liberty. Some 63,007,791 Americans have been lulled, under the aegis of "hope and change," into a state of what is best described as "cult worship" and all its attendant deception.
This battle is lost, but the war is not. Let's roll.
Mark Alexander,
Publisher, PatriotPost.us
Of course, none was expected -- liberals have elected a Socialist with deep ties to cultural and ethnocentric radicalism, and his executive and legislative agenda poses a greater threat to American liberty than that of any president in the history of our great republic.
Obama has twice taken an oath to "support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic" and to "bear true faith and allegiance to the same." He has never honored that oath, and, based on his policy proposals and objectives, he has no intention to honor it after again reciting that oath on 20 January 2009. Obama seeks to, in his own words, "break free from the essential constraints that were placed by the Founding Fathers in the Constitution."
For that reason, this morning, the symbol of our national heritage of liberty, the American flag atop the 35-foot mast at our editorial offices, was respectfully lowered, inverted, and raised to full mast as a sign of national distress. It will remain inverted until next Tuesday, when we right it in honor of Veterans Day.
Today, at least 55,805,197 Americans are concerned for the future of our nation's great tradition of liberty. Some 63,007,791 Americans have been lulled, under the aegis of "hope and change," into a state of what is best described as "cult worship" and all its attendant deception.
One of our editors, a Marine now working in the private sector, summed up our circumstances with this situation report. It aptly captured the sentiments around our office: "It's been tough, fellow Patriots; tough to stomach the idea that more than half of my fellow citizens who vote, have booted a genuine American hero to the curb for a rudderless charlatan. What a sad indictment on our citizenry that some are so eager to overlook his myriad flaws -- his radical roots, his extreme liberalism, his utter lack of experience or achievement. Barack Obama is the antithesis of King's dream: He's a man judged by the color of his skin rather than the content of his character. If it's God's will that Barack Obama is our next president, then so be it. We Patriots will pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off, and wade back to the war front, intent on liberty or death."
This battle is lost, but the war is not. Let's roll.
Mark Alexander,
Publisher, PatriotPost.us
Barack Obama: The Superior Santa Claus
Moochers Are Real Winners In Election '08
By MICHELLE MALKIN | Posted Wednesday, November 05, 2008 4:30 PM PT
Sorry to break the bad news to Joe the Plumber. But the winner of Campaign 2008 is Peggy the Moocher. No matter who moves into the White House, Peggy has good reason to do a happy dance.
The plain, ugly fact is that both major political parties are committed to spreading the wealth in one form or another. It's all just a question of how much and how quickly.
Who is Peggy the Moocher? She's Peggy Joseph, a voter in Sarasota, Fla., who exulted earlier this week at a Barack Obama rally that this was "the most memorable time of my life."
Why? As she told a Florida reporter on a YouTube video that has been viewed by hundreds of thousands: "Because I never thought this day would ever happen. I won't have to worry about putting gas in my car. I won't have to worry about paying my mortgage. You know. If I help (Obama), he's gonna help me."
You can't blame Peggy the Moocher for viewing Obama as the superior Santa Claus. With a relentless messianic campaign, a grievance-mongering wife touting him as the country's soul-fixer and a national infomercial promising to take care of every need from night classes to medical bills to rent and fuel-efficient cars, Obama effectively channeled Oprah Winfrey's Big Give.
"Everybody gets a car!" "Everybody gets a car!" And gas. And mortgage payment!
Read the whole thing!
By MICHELLE MALKIN | Posted Wednesday, November 05, 2008 4:30 PM PT
Sorry to break the bad news to Joe the Plumber. But the winner of Campaign 2008 is Peggy the Moocher. No matter who moves into the White House, Peggy has good reason to do a happy dance.
The plain, ugly fact is that both major political parties are committed to spreading the wealth in one form or another. It's all just a question of how much and how quickly.
Who is Peggy the Moocher? She's Peggy Joseph, a voter in Sarasota, Fla., who exulted earlier this week at a Barack Obama rally that this was "the most memorable time of my life."
Why? As she told a Florida reporter on a YouTube video that has been viewed by hundreds of thousands: "Because I never thought this day would ever happen. I won't have to worry about putting gas in my car. I won't have to worry about paying my mortgage. You know. If I help (Obama), he's gonna help me."
You can't blame Peggy the Moocher for viewing Obama as the superior Santa Claus. With a relentless messianic campaign, a grievance-mongering wife touting him as the country's soul-fixer and a national infomercial promising to take care of every need from night classes to medical bills to rent and fuel-efficient cars, Obama effectively channeled Oprah Winfrey's Big Give.
"Everybody gets a car!" "Everybody gets a car!" And gas. And mortgage payment!
Read the whole thing!
Can the most inexperienced President we've ever had rise to these occasions?
Geopolitical Weekly
OBAMA’S CHALLENGE
By George Friedman
Barack Obama has been elected president of the United States by a large majority in the Electoral College. The Democrats have dramatically increased their control of Congress, increasing the number of seats they hold in the House of Representatives and moving close to the point where -- with a few Republican defections -- they can have veto-proof control of the Senate. Given the age of some Supreme Court justices, Obama might well have the opportunity to appoint at least one and possibly two new justices. He will begin as one of the most powerful presidents in a long while.
Truly extraordinary were the celebrations held around the world upon Obama's victory. They affirm the global expectations Obama has raised -- and reveal that the United States must be more important to Europeans than the latter like to admit. (We can't imagine late-night vigils in the United States over a French election.)
Obama is an extraordinary rhetorician, and as Aristotle pointed out, rhetoric is one of the foundations of political power. Rhetoric has raised him to the presidency, along with the tremendous unpopularity of his predecessor and a financial crisis that took a tied campaign and gave Obama a lead he carefully nurtured to victory. So, as with all politicians, his victory was a matter of rhetoric and, according to Machiavelli, luck. Obama had both, but now the question is whether he has Machiavelli's virtue in full by possessing the ability to exercise power. This last element is what governing is about, and it is what will determine if his presidency succeeds.
Embedded in his tremendous victory is a single weakness: Obama won the popular vote by a fairly narrow margin, about 52 percent of the vote. That means that almost as many people voted against him as voted for him.
Obama's Agenda vs. Expanding His Base
U.S. President George W. Bush demonstrated that the inability to understand the uses and limits of power can crush a presidency very quickly. The enormous enthusiasm of Obama's followers could conceal how he -- like Bush -- is governing a deeply, and nearly evenly, divided country. Obama's first test will be simple: Can he maintain the devotion of his followers while increasing his political base? Or will he believe, as Bush and Cheney did, that he can govern without concern for the other half of the country because he controls the presidency and Congress, as Bush and Cheney did in 2001? Presidents are elected by electoral votes, but they govern through public support.
Obama and his supporters will say there is no danger of a repeat of Bush -- who believed he could carry out his agenda and build his political base at the same time, but couldn't. Building a political base requires modifying one's agenda. But when you start modifying your agenda, when you become pragmatic, you start to lose your supporters. If Obama had won with 60 percent of the popular vote, this would not be as pressing a question. But he barely won by more than Bush in 2004. Now, we will find out if Obama is as skillful a president as he was a candidate.
Obama will soon face the problem of beginning to disappoint people all over the world, a problem built into his job. The first disappointments will be minor. There are thousands of people hoping for appointments, some to Cabinet positions, others to the White House, others to federal agencies. Many will get something, but few will get as much as they hoped for. Some will feel betrayed and become bitter. During the transition process, the disappointed office seeker -- an institution in American politics -- will start leaking on background to whatever reporters are available. This will strike a small, discordant note; creating no serious problems, but serving as a harbinger of things to come.
Later, Obama will be sworn in. He will give a memorable, perhaps historic speech at his inauguration. There will be great expectations about him in the country and around the world. He will enjoy the traditional presidential honeymoon, during which all but his bitterest enemies will give him the benefit of the doubt. The press initially will adore him, but will begin writing stories about all the positions he hasn't filled, the mistakes he made in the vetting process and so on. And then, sometime in March or April, things will get interesting.
Iran and a U.S. Withdrawal From Iraq
Obama has promised to withdraw U.S. forces from Iraq, where he does not intend to leave any residual force. If he follows that course, he will open the door for the Iranians. Iran's primary national security interest is containing or dominating Iraq, with which Iran fought a long war. If the United States remains in Iraq, the Iranians will be forced to accept a neutral government in Iraq. A U.S. withdrawal will pave the way for the Iranians to use Iraqi proxies to create, at a minimum, an Iraqi government more heavily influenced by Iran.
Apart from upsetting Sunni and Kurdish allies of the United States in Iraq, the Iranian ascendancy in Iraq will disturb some major American allies -- particularly the Saudis, who fear Iranian power. The United States can't afford a scenario under which Iranian power is projected into the Saudi oil fields. While that might be an unlikely scenario, it carries catastrophic consequences. The Jordanians and possibly the Turks, also American allies, will pressure Obama not simply to withdraw. And, of course, the Israelis will want the United States to remain in place to block Iranian expansion. Resisting a coalition of Saudis and Israelis will not be easy.
This will be the point where Obama's pledge to talk to the Iranians will become crucial. If he simply withdraws from Iraq without a solid understanding with Iran, the entire American coalition in the region will come apart. Obama has pledged to build coalitions, something that will be difficult in the Middle East if he withdraws from Iraq without ironclad Iranian guarantees. He therefore will talk to the Iranians. But what can Obama offer the Iranians that would induce them to forego their primary national security interest? It is difficult to imagine a U.S.-Iranian deal that is both mutually beneficial and enforceable.
Obama will then be forced to make a decision. He can withdraw from Iraq and suffer the geopolitical consequences while coming under fire from the substantial political right in the United States that he needs at least in part to bring into his coalition. Or, he can retain some force in Iraq, thereby disappointing his supporters. If he is clumsy, he could wind up under attack from the right for negotiating with the Iranians and from his own supporters for not withdrawing all U.S. forces from Iraq. His skills in foreign policy and domestic politics will be tested on this core question, and he undoubtedly will disappoint many.
The Afghan Dilemma
Obama will need to address Afghanistan next. He has said that this is the real war, and that he will ask U.S. allies to join him in the effort. This means he will go to the Europeans and NATO, as he has said he will do. The Europeans are delighted with Obama's victory because they feel Obama will consult them and stop making demands of them. But demands are precisely what he will bring the Europeans. In particular, he will want the Europeans to provide more forces for Afghanistan.
Many European countries will be inclined to provide some support, if for no other reason than to show that they are prepared to work with Obama. But European public opinion is not about to support a major deployment in Afghanistan, and the Europeans don't have the force to deploy there anyway. In fact, as the global financial crisis begins to have a more dire impact in Europe than in the United States, many European countries are actively reducing their deployments in Afghanistan to save money. Expanding operations is the last thing on European minds.
Obama's Afghan solution of building a coalition centered on the Europeans will thus meet a divided Europe with little inclination to send troops and with few troops to send in any event. That will force him into a confrontation with the Europeans in spring 2009, and then into a decision. The United States and its allies collectively lack the force to stabilize Afghanistan and defeat the Taliban. They certainly lack the force to make a significant move into Pakistan -- something Obama has floated on several occasions that might be a good idea if force were in fact available.
He will have to make a hard decision on Afghanistan. Obama can continue the war as it is currently being fought, without hope of anything but a long holding action, but this risks defining his presidency around a hopeless war. He can choose to withdraw, in effect reinstating the Taliban, going back on his commitment and drawing heavy fire from the right. Or he can do what we have suggested is the inevitable outcome, namely, negotiate -- and reach a political accord -- with the Taliban. Unlike Bush, however, withdrawal or negotiation with the Taliban will increase the pressure on Obama from the right. And if this is coupled with a decision to delay withdrawal from Iraq, Obama's own supporters will become restive. His 52 percent Election Day support could deteriorate with remarkable speed.
The Russian Question
At the same time, Obama will face the Russian question. The morning after Obama's election, Russian President Dmitri Medvedev announced that Russia was deploying missiles in its European exclave of Kaliningrad in response to the U.S. deployment of ballistic missile defense systems in Poland. Obama opposed the Russians on their August intervention in Georgia, but he has never enunciated a clear Russia policy. We expect Ukraine will have shifted its political alignment toward Russia, and Moscow will be rapidly moving to create a sphere of influence before Obama can bring his attention -- and U.S. power -- to bear.
Obama will again turn to the Europeans to create a coalition to resist the Russians. But the Europeans will again be divided. The Germans can't afford to alienate the Russians because of German energy dependence on Russia and because Germany does not want to fight another Cold War. The British and French may be more inclined to address the question, but certainly not to the point of resurrecting NATO as a major military force. The Russians will be prepared to talk, and will want to talk a great deal, all the while pursuing their own national interest of increasing their power in what they call their "near abroad."
Obama will have many options on domestic policy given his majorities in Congress. But his Achilles' heel, as it was for Bush and for many presidents, will be foreign policy. He has made what appear to be three guarantees. First, he will withdraw from Iraq. Second, he will focus on Afghanistan. Third, he will oppose Russian expansionism. To deliver on the first promise, he must deal with the Iranians. To deliver on the second, he must deal with the Taliban. To deliver on the third, he must deal with the Europeans.
Global Finance and the European Problem
The Europeans will pose another critical problem, as they want a second Bretton Woods agreement. Some European states appear to desire a set of international regulations for the financial system. There are three problems with this.
First, unless Obama wants to change course dramatically, the U.S. and European positions differ over the degree to which governments will regulate interbank transactions. The Europeans want much more intrusion than the Americans. They are far less averse to direct government controls than the Americans have been. Obama has the power to shift American policy, but doing that will make it harder to expand his base.
Second, the creation of an international regulatory body that has authority over American banks would create a system where U.S. financial management was subordinated to European financial management.
And third, the Europeans themselves have no common understanding of things. Obama could thus quickly be drawn into complex EU policy issues that could tie his hands in the United States. These could quickly turn into painful negotiations, in which Obama's allure to the Europeans will evaporate.
One of the foundations of Obama's foreign policy -- and one of the reasons the Europeans have celebrated his election -- was the perception that Obama is prepared to work closely with the Europeans. He is in fact prepared to do so, but his problem will be the same one Bush had: The Europeans are in no position to give the things that Obama will need from them -- namely, troops, a revived NATO to confront the Russians and a global financial system that doesn't subordinate American financial authority to an international bureaucracy.
The Hard Road Ahead
Like any politician, Obama will face the challenge of having made a set of promises that are not mutually supportive. Much of his challenge boils down to problems that he needs to solve and that he wants European help on, but the Europeans are not prepared to provide the type and amount of help he needs. This, plus the fact that a U.S. withdrawal from Iraq requires an agreement with Iran -- something hard to imagine without a continued U.S. presence in Iraq -- gives Obama a difficult road to move on.
As with all American presidents (who face midterm elections with astonishing speed), Obama's foreign policy moves will be framed by his political support. Institutionally, he will be powerful. In terms of popular support, he begins knowing that almost half the country voted against him, and that he must increase his base. He must exploit the honeymoon period, when his support will expand, to bring another 5 percent or 10 percent of the public into his coalition. These people voted against him; now he needs to convince them to support him. But these are precisely the people who would regard talks with the Taliban or Iran with deep distrust. And if negotiations with the Iranians cause him to keep forces in Iraq, he will alienate his base without necessarily winning over his opponents.
And there is always the unknown. There could be a terrorist attack, the Russians could start pressuring the Baltic states, the Mexican situation could deteriorate. The unknown by definition cannot be anticipated. And many foreign leaders know it takes an administration months to settle in, something some will try to take advantage of. On top of that, there is now nearly a three-month window in which the old president is not yet out and the new president not yet in.
Obama must deal with extraordinarily difficult foreign policy issues in the context of an alliance failing not because of rough behavior among friends but because the allies' interests have diverged. He must deal with this in the context of foreign policy positions difficult to sustain and reconcile, all against the backdrop of almost half an electorate that voted against him versus supporters who have enormous hopes vested in him. Obama knows all of this, of course, as he indicated in his victory speech.
We will now find out if Obama understands the exercise of political power as well as he understands the pursuit of that power. You really can't know that until after the fact. There is no reason to think he can't finesse these problems. Doing so will take cunning, trickery and the ability to make his supporters forget the promises he made while keeping their support. It will also require the ability to make some of his opponents embrace him despite the path he will have to take. In other words, he will have to be cunning and ruthless without appearing to be cunning and ruthless. That's what successful presidents do.
In the meantime, he should enjoy the transition. It's frequently the best part of a presidency.
This report may be forwarded or republished on your website with attribution to www.stratfor.com.
Copyright 2008 Stratfor.
OBAMA’S CHALLENGE
By George Friedman
Barack Obama has been elected president of the United States by a large majority in the Electoral College. The Democrats have dramatically increased their control of Congress, increasing the number of seats they hold in the House of Representatives and moving close to the point where -- with a few Republican defections -- they can have veto-proof control of the Senate. Given the age of some Supreme Court justices, Obama might well have the opportunity to appoint at least one and possibly two new justices. He will begin as one of the most powerful presidents in a long while.
Truly extraordinary were the celebrations held around the world upon Obama's victory. They affirm the global expectations Obama has raised -- and reveal that the United States must be more important to Europeans than the latter like to admit. (We can't imagine late-night vigils in the United States over a French election.)
Obama is an extraordinary rhetorician, and as Aristotle pointed out, rhetoric is one of the foundations of political power. Rhetoric has raised him to the presidency, along with the tremendous unpopularity of his predecessor and a financial crisis that took a tied campaign and gave Obama a lead he carefully nurtured to victory. So, as with all politicians, his victory was a matter of rhetoric and, according to Machiavelli, luck. Obama had both, but now the question is whether he has Machiavelli's virtue in full by possessing the ability to exercise power. This last element is what governing is about, and it is what will determine if his presidency succeeds.
Embedded in his tremendous victory is a single weakness: Obama won the popular vote by a fairly narrow margin, about 52 percent of the vote. That means that almost as many people voted against him as voted for him.
Obama's Agenda vs. Expanding His Base
U.S. President George W. Bush demonstrated that the inability to understand the uses and limits of power can crush a presidency very quickly. The enormous enthusiasm of Obama's followers could conceal how he -- like Bush -- is governing a deeply, and nearly evenly, divided country. Obama's first test will be simple: Can he maintain the devotion of his followers while increasing his political base? Or will he believe, as Bush and Cheney did, that he can govern without concern for the other half of the country because he controls the presidency and Congress, as Bush and Cheney did in 2001? Presidents are elected by electoral votes, but they govern through public support.
Obama and his supporters will say there is no danger of a repeat of Bush -- who believed he could carry out his agenda and build his political base at the same time, but couldn't. Building a political base requires modifying one's agenda. But when you start modifying your agenda, when you become pragmatic, you start to lose your supporters. If Obama had won with 60 percent of the popular vote, this would not be as pressing a question. But he barely won by more than Bush in 2004. Now, we will find out if Obama is as skillful a president as he was a candidate.
Obama will soon face the problem of beginning to disappoint people all over the world, a problem built into his job. The first disappointments will be minor. There are thousands of people hoping for appointments, some to Cabinet positions, others to the White House, others to federal agencies. Many will get something, but few will get as much as they hoped for. Some will feel betrayed and become bitter. During the transition process, the disappointed office seeker -- an institution in American politics -- will start leaking on background to whatever reporters are available. This will strike a small, discordant note; creating no serious problems, but serving as a harbinger of things to come.
Later, Obama will be sworn in. He will give a memorable, perhaps historic speech at his inauguration. There will be great expectations about him in the country and around the world. He will enjoy the traditional presidential honeymoon, during which all but his bitterest enemies will give him the benefit of the doubt. The press initially will adore him, but will begin writing stories about all the positions he hasn't filled, the mistakes he made in the vetting process and so on. And then, sometime in March or April, things will get interesting.
Iran and a U.S. Withdrawal From Iraq
Obama has promised to withdraw U.S. forces from Iraq, where he does not intend to leave any residual force. If he follows that course, he will open the door for the Iranians. Iran's primary national security interest is containing or dominating Iraq, with which Iran fought a long war. If the United States remains in Iraq, the Iranians will be forced to accept a neutral government in Iraq. A U.S. withdrawal will pave the way for the Iranians to use Iraqi proxies to create, at a minimum, an Iraqi government more heavily influenced by Iran.
Apart from upsetting Sunni and Kurdish allies of the United States in Iraq, the Iranian ascendancy in Iraq will disturb some major American allies -- particularly the Saudis, who fear Iranian power. The United States can't afford a scenario under which Iranian power is projected into the Saudi oil fields. While that might be an unlikely scenario, it carries catastrophic consequences. The Jordanians and possibly the Turks, also American allies, will pressure Obama not simply to withdraw. And, of course, the Israelis will want the United States to remain in place to block Iranian expansion. Resisting a coalition of Saudis and Israelis will not be easy.
This will be the point where Obama's pledge to talk to the Iranians will become crucial. If he simply withdraws from Iraq without a solid understanding with Iran, the entire American coalition in the region will come apart. Obama has pledged to build coalitions, something that will be difficult in the Middle East if he withdraws from Iraq without ironclad Iranian guarantees. He therefore will talk to the Iranians. But what can Obama offer the Iranians that would induce them to forego their primary national security interest? It is difficult to imagine a U.S.-Iranian deal that is both mutually beneficial and enforceable.
Obama will then be forced to make a decision. He can withdraw from Iraq and suffer the geopolitical consequences while coming under fire from the substantial political right in the United States that he needs at least in part to bring into his coalition. Or, he can retain some force in Iraq, thereby disappointing his supporters. If he is clumsy, he could wind up under attack from the right for negotiating with the Iranians and from his own supporters for not withdrawing all U.S. forces from Iraq. His skills in foreign policy and domestic politics will be tested on this core question, and he undoubtedly will disappoint many.
The Afghan Dilemma
Obama will need to address Afghanistan next. He has said that this is the real war, and that he will ask U.S. allies to join him in the effort. This means he will go to the Europeans and NATO, as he has said he will do. The Europeans are delighted with Obama's victory because they feel Obama will consult them and stop making demands of them. But demands are precisely what he will bring the Europeans. In particular, he will want the Europeans to provide more forces for Afghanistan.
Many European countries will be inclined to provide some support, if for no other reason than to show that they are prepared to work with Obama. But European public opinion is not about to support a major deployment in Afghanistan, and the Europeans don't have the force to deploy there anyway. In fact, as the global financial crisis begins to have a more dire impact in Europe than in the United States, many European countries are actively reducing their deployments in Afghanistan to save money. Expanding operations is the last thing on European minds.
Obama's Afghan solution of building a coalition centered on the Europeans will thus meet a divided Europe with little inclination to send troops and with few troops to send in any event. That will force him into a confrontation with the Europeans in spring 2009, and then into a decision. The United States and its allies collectively lack the force to stabilize Afghanistan and defeat the Taliban. They certainly lack the force to make a significant move into Pakistan -- something Obama has floated on several occasions that might be a good idea if force were in fact available.
He will have to make a hard decision on Afghanistan. Obama can continue the war as it is currently being fought, without hope of anything but a long holding action, but this risks defining his presidency around a hopeless war. He can choose to withdraw, in effect reinstating the Taliban, going back on his commitment and drawing heavy fire from the right. Or he can do what we have suggested is the inevitable outcome, namely, negotiate -- and reach a political accord -- with the Taliban. Unlike Bush, however, withdrawal or negotiation with the Taliban will increase the pressure on Obama from the right. And if this is coupled with a decision to delay withdrawal from Iraq, Obama's own supporters will become restive. His 52 percent Election Day support could deteriorate with remarkable speed.
The Russian Question
At the same time, Obama will face the Russian question. The morning after Obama's election, Russian President Dmitri Medvedev announced that Russia was deploying missiles in its European exclave of Kaliningrad in response to the U.S. deployment of ballistic missile defense systems in Poland. Obama opposed the Russians on their August intervention in Georgia, but he has never enunciated a clear Russia policy. We expect Ukraine will have shifted its political alignment toward Russia, and Moscow will be rapidly moving to create a sphere of influence before Obama can bring his attention -- and U.S. power -- to bear.
Obama will again turn to the Europeans to create a coalition to resist the Russians. But the Europeans will again be divided. The Germans can't afford to alienate the Russians because of German energy dependence on Russia and because Germany does not want to fight another Cold War. The British and French may be more inclined to address the question, but certainly not to the point of resurrecting NATO as a major military force. The Russians will be prepared to talk, and will want to talk a great deal, all the while pursuing their own national interest of increasing their power in what they call their "near abroad."
Obama will have many options on domestic policy given his majorities in Congress. But his Achilles' heel, as it was for Bush and for many presidents, will be foreign policy. He has made what appear to be three guarantees. First, he will withdraw from Iraq. Second, he will focus on Afghanistan. Third, he will oppose Russian expansionism. To deliver on the first promise, he must deal with the Iranians. To deliver on the second, he must deal with the Taliban. To deliver on the third, he must deal with the Europeans.
Global Finance and the European Problem
The Europeans will pose another critical problem, as they want a second Bretton Woods agreement. Some European states appear to desire a set of international regulations for the financial system. There are three problems with this.
First, unless Obama wants to change course dramatically, the U.S. and European positions differ over the degree to which governments will regulate interbank transactions. The Europeans want much more intrusion than the Americans. They are far less averse to direct government controls than the Americans have been. Obama has the power to shift American policy, but doing that will make it harder to expand his base.
Second, the creation of an international regulatory body that has authority over American banks would create a system where U.S. financial management was subordinated to European financial management.
And third, the Europeans themselves have no common understanding of things. Obama could thus quickly be drawn into complex EU policy issues that could tie his hands in the United States. These could quickly turn into painful negotiations, in which Obama's allure to the Europeans will evaporate.
One of the foundations of Obama's foreign policy -- and one of the reasons the Europeans have celebrated his election -- was the perception that Obama is prepared to work closely with the Europeans. He is in fact prepared to do so, but his problem will be the same one Bush had: The Europeans are in no position to give the things that Obama will need from them -- namely, troops, a revived NATO to confront the Russians and a global financial system that doesn't subordinate American financial authority to an international bureaucracy.
The Hard Road Ahead
Like any politician, Obama will face the challenge of having made a set of promises that are not mutually supportive. Much of his challenge boils down to problems that he needs to solve and that he wants European help on, but the Europeans are not prepared to provide the type and amount of help he needs. This, plus the fact that a U.S. withdrawal from Iraq requires an agreement with Iran -- something hard to imagine without a continued U.S. presence in Iraq -- gives Obama a difficult road to move on.
As with all American presidents (who face midterm elections with astonishing speed), Obama's foreign policy moves will be framed by his political support. Institutionally, he will be powerful. In terms of popular support, he begins knowing that almost half the country voted against him, and that he must increase his base. He must exploit the honeymoon period, when his support will expand, to bring another 5 percent or 10 percent of the public into his coalition. These people voted against him; now he needs to convince them to support him. But these are precisely the people who would regard talks with the Taliban or Iran with deep distrust. And if negotiations with the Iranians cause him to keep forces in Iraq, he will alienate his base without necessarily winning over his opponents.
And there is always the unknown. There could be a terrorist attack, the Russians could start pressuring the Baltic states, the Mexican situation could deteriorate. The unknown by definition cannot be anticipated. And many foreign leaders know it takes an administration months to settle in, something some will try to take advantage of. On top of that, there is now nearly a three-month window in which the old president is not yet out and the new president not yet in.
Obama must deal with extraordinarily difficult foreign policy issues in the context of an alliance failing not because of rough behavior among friends but because the allies' interests have diverged. He must deal with this in the context of foreign policy positions difficult to sustain and reconcile, all against the backdrop of almost half an electorate that voted against him versus supporters who have enormous hopes vested in him. Obama knows all of this, of course, as he indicated in his victory speech.
We will now find out if Obama understands the exercise of political power as well as he understands the pursuit of that power. You really can't know that until after the fact. There is no reason to think he can't finesse these problems. Doing so will take cunning, trickery and the ability to make his supporters forget the promises he made while keeping their support. It will also require the ability to make some of his opponents embrace him despite the path he will have to take. In other words, he will have to be cunning and ruthless without appearing to be cunning and ruthless. That's what successful presidents do.
In the meantime, he should enjoy the transition. It's frequently the best part of a presidency.
This report may be forwarded or republished on your website with attribution to www.stratfor.com.
Copyright 2008 Stratfor.
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Disgraceful...but starting now everyone should bow and scrape, right?
OPINION NOVEMBER 5, 2008
The Treatment of Bush Has Been a Disgrace
What must our enemies be thinking?
By JEFFREY SCOTT SHAPIRO
Earlier this year, 12,000 people in San Francisco signed a petition in support of a proposition on a local ballot to rename an Oceanside sewage plant after George W. Bush. The proposition is only one example of the classless disrespect many Americans have shown the president.
According to recent Gallup polls, the president's average approval rating is below 30% -- down from his 90% approval in the wake of 9/11. Mr. Bush has endured relentless attacks from the left while facing abandonment from the right.
This is the price Mr. Bush is paying for trying to work with both Democrats and Republicans. During his 2004 victory speech, the president reached out to voters who supported his opponent, John Kerry, and said, "Today, I want to speak to every person who voted for my opponent. To make this nation stronger and better, I will need your support, and I will work to earn it. I will do all I can do to deserve your trust."
Those bipartisan efforts have been met with crushing resistance from both political parties.
The president's original Supreme Court choice of Harriet Miers alarmed Republicans, while his final nomination of Samuel Alito angered Democrats. His solutions to reform the immigration system alienated traditional conservatives, while his refusal to retreat in Iraq has enraged liberals who have unrealistic expectations about the challenges we face there.
It seems that no matter what Mr. Bush does, he is blamed for everything. He remains despised by the left while continuously disappointing the right.
Yet it should seem obvious that many of our country's current problems either existed long before Mr. Bush ever came to office, or are beyond his control. Perhaps if Americans stopped being so divisive, and congressional leaders came together to work with the president on some of these problems, he would actually have had a fighting chance of solving them.
Like the president said in his 2004 victory speech, "We have one country, one Constitution and one future that binds us. And when we come together and work together, there is no limit to the greatness of America."
To be sure, Mr. Bush is not completely alone. His low approval ratings put him in the good company of former Democratic President Harry S. Truman, whose own approval rating sank to 22% shortly before he left office. Despite Mr. Truman's low numbers, a 2005 Wall Street Journal poll found that he was ranked the seventh most popular president in history.
Just as Americans have gained perspective on how challenging Truman's presidency was in the wake of World War II, our country will recognize the hardship President Bush faced these past eight years -- and how extraordinary it was that he accomplished what he did in the wake of the September 11 attacks.
The treatment President Bush has received from this country is nothing less than a disgrace. The attacks launched against him have been cruel and slanderous, proving to the world what little character and resolve we have. The president is not to blame for all these problems. He never lost faith in America or her people, and has tried his hardest to continue leading our nation during a very difficult time.
Our failure to stand by the one person who continued to stand by us has not gone unnoticed by our enemies. It has shown to the world how disloyal we can be when our president needed loyalty -- a shameful display of arrogance and weakness that will haunt this nation long after Mr. Bush has left the White House.
Mr. Shapiro is an investigative reporter and lawyer who previously interned with John F. Kerry's legal team during the presidential election in 2004.
The Treatment of Bush Has Been a Disgrace
What must our enemies be thinking?
By JEFFREY SCOTT SHAPIRO
Earlier this year, 12,000 people in San Francisco signed a petition in support of a proposition on a local ballot to rename an Oceanside sewage plant after George W. Bush. The proposition is only one example of the classless disrespect many Americans have shown the president.
According to recent Gallup polls, the president's average approval rating is below 30% -- down from his 90% approval in the wake of 9/11. Mr. Bush has endured relentless attacks from the left while facing abandonment from the right.
This is the price Mr. Bush is paying for trying to work with both Democrats and Republicans. During his 2004 victory speech, the president reached out to voters who supported his opponent, John Kerry, and said, "Today, I want to speak to every person who voted for my opponent. To make this nation stronger and better, I will need your support, and I will work to earn it. I will do all I can do to deserve your trust."
Those bipartisan efforts have been met with crushing resistance from both political parties.
The president's original Supreme Court choice of Harriet Miers alarmed Republicans, while his final nomination of Samuel Alito angered Democrats. His solutions to reform the immigration system alienated traditional conservatives, while his refusal to retreat in Iraq has enraged liberals who have unrealistic expectations about the challenges we face there.
It seems that no matter what Mr. Bush does, he is blamed for everything. He remains despised by the left while continuously disappointing the right.
Yet it should seem obvious that many of our country's current problems either existed long before Mr. Bush ever came to office, or are beyond his control. Perhaps if Americans stopped being so divisive, and congressional leaders came together to work with the president on some of these problems, he would actually have had a fighting chance of solving them.
Like the president said in his 2004 victory speech, "We have one country, one Constitution and one future that binds us. And when we come together and work together, there is no limit to the greatness of America."
To be sure, Mr. Bush is not completely alone. His low approval ratings put him in the good company of former Democratic President Harry S. Truman, whose own approval rating sank to 22% shortly before he left office. Despite Mr. Truman's low numbers, a 2005 Wall Street Journal poll found that he was ranked the seventh most popular president in history.
Just as Americans have gained perspective on how challenging Truman's presidency was in the wake of World War II, our country will recognize the hardship President Bush faced these past eight years -- and how extraordinary it was that he accomplished what he did in the wake of the September 11 attacks.
The treatment President Bush has received from this country is nothing less than a disgrace. The attacks launched against him have been cruel and slanderous, proving to the world what little character and resolve we have. The president is not to blame for all these problems. He never lost faith in America or her people, and has tried his hardest to continue leading our nation during a very difficult time.
Our failure to stand by the one person who continued to stand by us has not gone unnoticed by our enemies. It has shown to the world how disloyal we can be when our president needed loyalty -- a shameful display of arrogance and weakness that will haunt this nation long after Mr. Bush has left the White House.
Mr. Shapiro is an investigative reporter and lawyer who previously interned with John F. Kerry's legal team during the presidential election in 2004.
Tuesday, November 04, 2008
The future President and First Angry Lady...
...at a party with terrorists Bill Ayers and Rashid Khalidi where they toasted the demise of Israel. Way to go USA.
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Monday, November 03, 2008
McCAIN CAMPAIGN MEMO: READING THE EXIT POLLS
BILL McINTURFF, INTERNAL POLLSTER
Mon Nov 03 2008 16:53:14 ET
As we have seen in previous election cycles, the exit poll results do leak early and that ends up influencing the coverage of the race before even the first state polls close at 6:00 PM Eastern.
However, we want to remind the campaign that the media’s own post-election study of the exit polls in 2004 showed that the exit polls overstate the Democratic candidate’s support. Therefore, we would discourage a rush to judgment based on the exit polls and wait until there has been a representative sampling of actual tabulated results from a variety of counties and precincts in a state.
Here are the key points to keep in mind when the exit poll data starts being leaked:
1. Historically, exit polls have tended to overstate the Democratic vote.
2. The exit polls are likely to overstate the Obama vote because Obama voters are more likely to participate in the exit poll.
3. The exit polls have tended to skew most Democratic in years where there is high turnout and high vote interest like in 1992 and 2004.
4. It is not just the national exit poll that skews Democratic, but each of the state exit polls also suffers from the same Democratic leanings.
5. The results of the exit polls are also influenced by the demographics of the voters who conduct the exit polls.
After the 2004 election, the National Election Pool completed a study investigating why the exit polls that year showed John Kerry over performing 5.5 net points better than the actual results showed him to have done. Their conclusion was that the primary reason the exit polls was that Kerry voters and Democrats were more likely to participate in the exit polls.
“Our investigation of the differences between the exit poll estimates and the actual vote count point to one primary reason: in a number of precincts a higher than average Within Precinct Error most likely due to Kerry voters participating in the exit polls at a higher rate than Bush voters. There has been partisan overstatements in previous elections, more often overstating the Democrat, but occasionally overstating the Republican.
We believe that this will hold true this year. The recent Fox News survey showed that 46% of Obama voters said they were very likely to participate in the exit polls, while just 35% of McCain supporters are.
In fact, even the 2004 exit poll report noted that higher turnout nationally and higher levels of voter interest in both 1992 and 2004 correlated with greater Within Precinct Error.
The overstating of the Democratic vote did not only occur in the national exit polls, but also occurred in the state exit polls. The 2004 exit poll report cited that the Kerry vote was overstated by more than one standard error in 26 states, while the Bush vote was overstated in just four states. So we should also expect the individual state exit polls on Tuesday to be more Democratic as well.
So given that turnout is expected to be even higher than 2004 and that Democrats are more likely to participate in the exit polls, this means we should expect greater fluctuation and variation in the exit polls from the actual election results.
The 2004 exit poll report also showed that the greatest error in the exit poll came in precincts where the interviewer was younger. The completion rates were lower and the refusal rates and Within Precinct Error was higher when the interviewers were under the age of 35.[6] Complicating this is that nearly half the interviewers were under the age of 35, including 35% who were 18-24 and another 15% were 25-34.
Conclusions
Based on the previous exit poll results, we should expect once again that Tuesday’s exit poll data could overstate the Obama vote and under represent the McCain vote.
It is important that the campaign make sure the media realizes this, so that when the exit polls do leak, people do not overreact to the early exit poll data. Rather than looking at the exit polls, we should wait until we start seeing actual election results from key precincts and counties to gauge who won the election.
Mon Nov 03 2008 16:53:14 ET
As we have seen in previous election cycles, the exit poll results do leak early and that ends up influencing the coverage of the race before even the first state polls close at 6:00 PM Eastern.
However, we want to remind the campaign that the media’s own post-election study of the exit polls in 2004 showed that the exit polls overstate the Democratic candidate’s support. Therefore, we would discourage a rush to judgment based on the exit polls and wait until there has been a representative sampling of actual tabulated results from a variety of counties and precincts in a state.
Here are the key points to keep in mind when the exit poll data starts being leaked:
1. Historically, exit polls have tended to overstate the Democratic vote.
2. The exit polls are likely to overstate the Obama vote because Obama voters are more likely to participate in the exit poll.
3. The exit polls have tended to skew most Democratic in years where there is high turnout and high vote interest like in 1992 and 2004.
4. It is not just the national exit poll that skews Democratic, but each of the state exit polls also suffers from the same Democratic leanings.
5. The results of the exit polls are also influenced by the demographics of the voters who conduct the exit polls.
After the 2004 election, the National Election Pool completed a study investigating why the exit polls that year showed John Kerry over performing 5.5 net points better than the actual results showed him to have done. Their conclusion was that the primary reason the exit polls was that Kerry voters and Democrats were more likely to participate in the exit polls.
“Our investigation of the differences between the exit poll estimates and the actual vote count point to one primary reason: in a number of precincts a higher than average Within Precinct Error most likely due to Kerry voters participating in the exit polls at a higher rate than Bush voters. There has been partisan overstatements in previous elections, more often overstating the Democrat, but occasionally overstating the Republican.
We believe that this will hold true this year. The recent Fox News survey showed that 46% of Obama voters said they were very likely to participate in the exit polls, while just 35% of McCain supporters are.
In fact, even the 2004 exit poll report noted that higher turnout nationally and higher levels of voter interest in both 1992 and 2004 correlated with greater Within Precinct Error.
The overstating of the Democratic vote did not only occur in the national exit polls, but also occurred in the state exit polls. The 2004 exit poll report cited that the Kerry vote was overstated by more than one standard error in 26 states, while the Bush vote was overstated in just four states. So we should also expect the individual state exit polls on Tuesday to be more Democratic as well.
So given that turnout is expected to be even higher than 2004 and that Democrats are more likely to participate in the exit polls, this means we should expect greater fluctuation and variation in the exit polls from the actual election results.
The 2004 exit poll report also showed that the greatest error in the exit poll came in precincts where the interviewer was younger. The completion rates were lower and the refusal rates and Within Precinct Error was higher when the interviewers were under the age of 35.[6] Complicating this is that nearly half the interviewers were under the age of 35, including 35% who were 18-24 and another 15% were 25-34.
Conclusions
Based on the previous exit poll results, we should expect once again that Tuesday’s exit poll data could overstate the Obama vote and under represent the McCain vote.
It is important that the campaign make sure the media realizes this, so that when the exit polls do leak, people do not overreact to the early exit poll data. Rather than looking at the exit polls, we should wait until we start seeing actual election results from key precincts and counties to gauge who won the election.
Ohio Coal Association: Obama a disaster for the Coal Industry
...the Obama-Biden ticket spells disaster for America's coal industry and the tens of thousands of Americans who work in it.Read the whole thing!
Obama Poster Design Was Stolen From Communists!
UPDATE (FOR PETE'S SAKE):
The silly little "Bark for Barack" poster was copied from this Communist poster painted in the 1920's!!! You really have to see it to believe it.
The silly little "Bark for Barack" poster was copied from this Communist poster painted in the 1920's!!! You really have to see it to believe it.
Sunday, November 02, 2008
Obama-Farrakhan Ties Are Close, Ex-Farrakhan Aide Says
A former top deputy to Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan tells Newsmax that Barack Obama’s ties to the black nationalist movement in Chicago run deep, and that for many years the two men have had “an open line between them” to discuss policy and strategy, either directly or through intermediaries.Farrakhan has called Jews “bloodsuckers,” “satanic” and accused them of running the slave trade. He has labeled gays as “degenerates.” In a 2006 speech, the ADL again condemned Farrakhan when he said: “These false Jews promote the filth of Hollywood that is seeding the American people and the people of the world and bringing you down in moral strength. … It’s the wicked Jews the false Jews that are promoting lesbianism, homosexuality. It’s wicked Jews, false Jews that make it a crime for you to preach the word of God, then they call you homophobic!”
Hugo Chavez...and Barack Obama
Can Obama Pull Off A Hugo Chavez…You can bet your assets.
The Violent Crime Control Act of 1994 provides additional powers to the President of the United States, allowing the suspension of the Constitution and Constitutional rights of Americans during a “drug crisis”. It provides for the construction of detention camps, seizure of property, and military control of populated areas.
This, teamed with the Executive Orders of the President, enables Orwellian prophecies to rest on whoever occupies the White House. The power provided by these “laws” allows suspension of the Constitution and the rights guaranteed in the Bill of Rights during any civil disturbances, major demonstrations and strikes and allows the military to implement government ordered movements of civilian populations at state and regional levels, the arrest of certain unidentified segments of the population, and the imposition of Martial Law.
When the Constitution of the United States was framed it placed the exclusive legislative authority in the hands of Congress and with the President. Article I, Section 1 of the United States Constitution is concise in its language, “All legislative powers herein granted shall be vested in a Congress of the United States, which shall consist of a Senate and House of Representatives.” That is no longer true. The Bill of Rights protected Americans against loss of freedoms. That is no longer true. The Constitution provided for a balanced separation of powers. That is no longer applicable.
Perhaps it can be summed up succinctly in the words of arch-conservative activist Howard J Ruff. “Since the enactment of Executive Order 11490, the only thing standing between us and dictatorship is the good character of the President, and the lack of a crisis severe enough that the public would stand still for it.”
Here are just a few Executive Orders that would suspend the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. These Executive Orders have been on record for nearly 30 years and could be enacted by the stroke of a Presidential pen:
[see website below for the entire list]
The Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act (VCCLEA; also known as the Biden Crime Law) was an act of Congress dealing with crime and law enforcement that became law in 1994. It is the largest crime bill in the history of the US and will provide for 100,000 new police officers, $9.7 billion in funding for prisons and $6.1 billion in funding for prevention programs which were designed with significant input from experienced police officers. [1] Sponsored by U.S. Representative Jack Brooks of Texas, the bill was passed by Congress and signed into law by President Bill Clinton.
After spending nine years in Navy Intelligence as a Cryptologist, intercepting communications from Marxist/Socialist countries, breaking their codes, and gathering intelligence in “other” ways. I am familiar with their methods of using the media for propangada, using the educational system to indoctrinate young minds, using the judicial system, and voter fraud to steal elections.
This is what is happening now in america.
From everything I have researched in the last two years, has lead me to conclude that Obama was selected, tutored, groomed, scripted, and financed by Radical Marxist/Socialists to become the puppet leader of the USSA.
There is a vast difference between Social Democrats and Radical Marxist/Socialists. Hillary Clinton is a Social Democrat. Obama, Pelosi, Reid, Dodd, Schumer, Durbin, Franks,Boxer, and a few others now in Congress are Radical Marxist/Socialists.
On my website: [valsword.spaces.live.com] I have a 16 minute video of an interview with Yure Bezmenov a KGB agent who defected in 1970. This interview was recorded 24 years ago, and the transcript highlights, in Yuri’s own words confirm what I mentioned in the first paragraph.
I pray that I am wrong, but from everything I have researched, I believe Obama, with a Reid Pelosi led Congress, with a radical judicial system will pull a Hugo Chavez.
Finish article here
The Violent Crime Control Act of 1994 provides additional powers to the President of the United States, allowing the suspension of the Constitution and Constitutional rights of Americans during a “drug crisis”. It provides for the construction of detention camps, seizure of property, and military control of populated areas.
This, teamed with the Executive Orders of the President, enables Orwellian prophecies to rest on whoever occupies the White House. The power provided by these “laws” allows suspension of the Constitution and the rights guaranteed in the Bill of Rights during any civil disturbances, major demonstrations and strikes and allows the military to implement government ordered movements of civilian populations at state and regional levels, the arrest of certain unidentified segments of the population, and the imposition of Martial Law.
When the Constitution of the United States was framed it placed the exclusive legislative authority in the hands of Congress and with the President. Article I, Section 1 of the United States Constitution is concise in its language, “All legislative powers herein granted shall be vested in a Congress of the United States, which shall consist of a Senate and House of Representatives.” That is no longer true. The Bill of Rights protected Americans against loss of freedoms. That is no longer true. The Constitution provided for a balanced separation of powers. That is no longer applicable.
Perhaps it can be summed up succinctly in the words of arch-conservative activist Howard J Ruff. “Since the enactment of Executive Order 11490, the only thing standing between us and dictatorship is the good character of the President, and the lack of a crisis severe enough that the public would stand still for it.”
Here are just a few Executive Orders that would suspend the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. These Executive Orders have been on record for nearly 30 years and could be enacted by the stroke of a Presidential pen:
[see website below for the entire list]
The Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act (VCCLEA; also known as the Biden Crime Law) was an act of Congress dealing with crime and law enforcement that became law in 1994. It is the largest crime bill in the history of the US and will provide for 100,000 new police officers, $9.7 billion in funding for prisons and $6.1 billion in funding for prevention programs which were designed with significant input from experienced police officers. [1] Sponsored by U.S. Representative Jack Brooks of Texas, the bill was passed by Congress and signed into law by President Bill Clinton.
After spending nine years in Navy Intelligence as a Cryptologist, intercepting communications from Marxist/Socialist countries, breaking their codes, and gathering intelligence in “other” ways. I am familiar with their methods of using the media for propangada, using the educational system to indoctrinate young minds, using the judicial system, and voter fraud to steal elections.
This is what is happening now in america.
From everything I have researched in the last two years, has lead me to conclude that Obama was selected, tutored, groomed, scripted, and financed by Radical Marxist/Socialists to become the puppet leader of the USSA.
There is a vast difference between Social Democrats and Radical Marxist/Socialists. Hillary Clinton is a Social Democrat. Obama, Pelosi, Reid, Dodd, Schumer, Durbin, Franks,Boxer, and a few others now in Congress are Radical Marxist/Socialists.
On my website: [valsword.spaces.live.com] I have a 16 minute video of an interview with Yure Bezmenov a KGB agent who defected in 1970. This interview was recorded 24 years ago, and the transcript highlights, in Yuri’s own words confirm what I mentioned in the first paragraph.
I pray that I am wrong, but from everything I have researched, I believe Obama, with a Reid Pelosi led Congress, with a radical judicial system will pull a Hugo Chavez.
Finish article here
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McCain easily surpasses Barack Obama in wisdom, values, character, experience, judgment, truth-telling, and his positions on most of the issues
The case for McCain is matched by the case against Obama. Go ahead and pull the lever for Obama if you want a president - let's see . . .
- Who has kept the company of radicals and the corrupt, is a product of the ruthless Chicago political machine, and in the mid-1990s was a member of the New Party - an offshoot of the quasi-Communist Democratic Socialists of America.
- Who regarding many of those early associations, and on most issues, is insistently vague, sketchy, and opaque. (For instance, as a regularly attending parishioner over 20 years, could he truly not have heard - or sensed - the unconscionable extremism of the spiritual adviser who married him and baptized his daughters?)
- Who lengthily cites the need for bipartisanship yet can offer no substantive record of it, has on no major issue bucked his party, and speaks of his ideological adversaries with a smug, debonair, patronizing condescension.
- Who on foreign policy is an isolationist, protectionist naif with essentially no experience, driven by the leftist conviction that he can schmooze even the meanest Islamofascist or Iranian thug around to right reason. How successful is a dreamy-eyed untested high-schooler likely to be at mixing it up in the National Football League?
- Who was willing to lose in Iraq, and even now remains unwilling to acknowledge that the U.S. surge of forces there achieved what might be construed as a win.
- WHO ACCORDING to Army Times, Navy Times, and Air Force Times surveys, trails John McCain among active duty military personnel by better than 2-1.
- Who campaigns on "change" and "hope" and "yes we can" - vapid inky nebulosities reminiscent of nothing quite so much as Richard Nixon's "Now More Than Ever" and "Nixon's the One."
- Who hardly is a conservative reformer like McCain, but a tax-and-spend leftist more radical in (a) his approach to government and (b) his views on America in the world than any nominee for the presidency ever.
Who speaks nonsense on taxes generally, and in the midst of a financial maelstrom and slow-motion crash not only would end the Bush tax cuts (terming some of them "corporate welfare"), but also would impose a new redistributionist, spread-the-wealth system levying higher taxes on the most productive and allowing nearly half the voters to ride practically for free. - Who speaks equal nonsense on Social Security reform and health care.
- Who in 2005 refused to join the effort - in which McCain was a principal - to rein in Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, so enabled by sitting members of Congress (especially Democrats Barney Frank and Christopher Dodd) to do their subprime lending damage to the nation's financial system. (Two heavily compensated and bonused former executives of those agencies have been advisers to the Obama campaign, one of them, with Caroline Kennedy, responsible for fingering the undistinguished Joe Biden - the Senate's No. 3 liberal, to No. 1 liberal Obama - as the most distinguished prospect to become Obama's running mate.)
- Who nourishes a regulationist mentality that would intrude the federal government ever more into the private sector and private lives.
- WHO IN MID-October - according to polls - was deemed unqualified for the presidency by 45 percent of the electorate (about the same percentage as in mid-March).
- Who falls woefully short on energy independence, especially in his odd resistance to the nuclear power without which the U.S. cannot free itself from the tightening noose of hateful petro-dictatorships such as those in Moscow, Caracas, and Tehran.
- Who dismisses as somehow flawed the achieving feminism of a Sarah Palin possessing more executive experience than Messrs. Obama and Biden combined (yet still mocked by the left as unqualified to be vice president), in favor of the "a woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle" feminism of Gloria Steinem.
- Who, in league with Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid manipulating a Democratic supermajority in Congress, would preside over an aggressive leftist orthodoxy re-established in Washington utterly unstoppable - as at no time since the New Deal and the Great Society. Says McCain: "Were my opponent elected with a Democratic Congress in power, not only would there be no check on my opponent's reckless economic policies, there would be considerable pressure on him to tax and spend even more."
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