This article addresses Washington’s financial coup d’etat in the context of discussing Michael Hudson’s important, very lengthy and detailed April 5 Global Research.ca one titled: “The Financial War Against Iceland – Being defeated by debt is as deadly as outright military warfare.” It reviews its key information in advance of Hudson’s April 14 scheduled appearance on The Global Research News Hour to discuss.
Russia
Permanent debt bondage "is as deadly as outright military" defeat. Loss of livelihoods and assets leave people vulnerable to sickness, despair, and early deaths, much like what happened to post-Soviet Russia under Washington-imposed "shock therapy."
What’s true for Iceland holds everywhere, including the developed world, the idea being to enrich finance capitalism through state-sponsored debt bondage and neo-feudal impoverishment. The global economic crisis was no accident. It was long ago hatched, and has been brewing for years, gestating, percolating, then bubbling into the 2000 tech crash, a mere prelude for today’s greater one spreading everywhere like a cancer but hitting the developing world and most indebted nations hardest.
Hudson: “Iceland is under attack – not militarily but financially.”
Like many others, “It owes more than it can pay” and is bankrupt. It was planned that way, and the idea is to strip-mine the nation and its people of their resources, enterprises, assets, land, homes, jobs and futures through perpetual debt bondage. Bankers get enriched. Nations and people, however, are discarded like trash, with the IMF as enforcer, to be reinvigorated with an additional (G 20-pledged) $750 billion, quadrupling its resources to $1 trillion if fulfilled.
Wall Street and Western European bankers planned it and now ordered the government “to sell off the nation’s public domain, its natural resources and public enterprises to pay (its) financial gambling debts.” Also, raise permanent taxes at the worst possible time, then suck the maximum wealth from the country leaving behind an empty hulk and impoverished, desparate population. It’s called dystopia Merriam-Webster defines as: “an imaginary place where people lead dehumanized and often fearful lives,” the opposite of utopia under conditions of deprivation, poverty, disease, violence, oppression, and terror, much like in Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four.
Permanent debt bondage “is as deadly as outright military” defeat. Loss of livelihoods and assets leave people vulnerable to sickness, despair, and early deaths, much like what happened to post-Soviet Russia under Washington-imposed “shock therapy:”
— 80% of farmers went bankrupt;
— around 70,000 state factories closed;
— unemployment became epidemic;
— a permanent underclass was created;
— poverty rose from two million in 1989 to 74 million by the mid-1990s, and in half the cases it was desperate;
— alcoholism and drug abuse soared;
— so did HIV/AIDS 20-fold;
— suicides also and violent crime four-fold; and
— the population declined by 700,000 a year; by 2007 it was 10% lower than in 1989 because of sharply reduced life expectancies.
Iceland, the developing world, and the West take note. This cancer is heading everywhere, courtesy of banker-imposed diktats, mainly from America and the UK. They insist Iceland “impoverish its citizens by paying debts in ways (they’d) never follow” even though the government has no way to do it.
No matter. “They are quite willing to take payment in the form of foreclosure on the nation’s natural resources, land and housing, and a mortgage on the next few centuries of its future” – perpetual debt bondage no different than the spoils of war under permanent occupation.
However, in this case, debtors are convinced to pay voluntarily “to put creditor interests above the economy’s prosperity (and) national interest.” Their indebtedness comes at a huge cost – “chronic currency depreciation (and) domestic price inflation for many decades to come.”
Contrast this to how developed countries, like America, handle debt – by inflating (not deflating) their way out to pay it off with cheap (reduced purchasing power) money because inflation erodes its value. It’s simple – by printing money and running budget deficits the way Washington did after Nixon closed the gold window in August 1971, ended the 1944 Bretton Woods Agreement, and no longer let dollars be backed by gold or converted into it in international markets. A new monetary system creates money like confetti, and lets us spend and live beyond our means, then have developing and indebted nations pay the price.
In recent years, dollar weakness and price inflation “wiped out much of the US international debt.” The Iceland model turns “this inflationary solution inside out….in violation of traditional credit practice.” Instead of currency inflation, Iceland “inflate(d) its way into debt, not out of it, (by) indexing (it) to the rate of inflation,” thus guaranteeing “a unique windfall for banks at the expense of wage earners and industrial profits.” The result: destruction of its traditional way of life.
Iceland must “repudiate this debt bomb” to escape. It’s indexed to inflation and “will never lose value.” It’s caught in a destructive whirlpool creating economic shrinkage, falling assets and wages in the face of perpetually burgeoning debt, the same global model needing to be exposed and renounced “now.” Otherwise, economies will be hollowed out, “capital formation will plunge,” people will be impoverished, and many won’t survive.
Hudson’s Background
His expertise comes from “having been an insider to imperial-style plundering….for forty years” – as an economist for Chase Manhattan Bank, Arthur Andersen, and the UN Institute for Training and Development (UNITAR). He’s also taught economics since 1969, heads a Harvard-based economic and financial history group, is a Research Professor at the University of Missouri, and organized the first sovereign-debt fund in 1990 at Scudder, Stevens and Clark.
“All these jobs (except his current professorship) involved analyzing the limited ability of debtor countries to pay – how much could be extracted from them through foreign-currency loans and how much public infrastructure (could) be sold off (through) voluntary virtual foreclosure (under) creditor-dictated rules.”
He advises countries not to borrow in foreign currencies, instead “monetize their own credit for domestic spending and investment.” Iceland broke “the cardinal rule of international finance: Never borrow in a foreign currency for credit” that can freely be created at home. “Governments can inflate their way out of domestic debt,” not the foreign kind.
Post-Soviet economies did it the wrong way, now suffer, and recent riots highlight their problems. “Instead of helping them industrialize and become more efficient,” Western bankers loaded them with debt and exploited them – not for manufacturing and infrastructure development, as loans against existing real estate and infrastructure, to suck as much wealth out quickly.
It produced “bubble economies built on debt-financed real estate and stock market inflation,” illusory wealth “bubbles (that) always burst.” The only sustainable financing of imports is through enough exports for a favorable balance of trade.
De-industrialization destroys economies by shrinking them, the result of plunging property valuations, rental income, and exchange rates. Foreign currency mortgage costs exceed property values producing defaults and losses for lenders.
It’s hitting Sweden, Austria and leading creditor states like America and the UK. Real estate, stock market and employment are declining “in a straight line unprecedented even in the Great Depression.” It’s turned neoliberalism into a nightmare.
“Just as individuals can’t live off a credit card forever, neither can nations. As any classical economist knows, societies that only manufacture debt are unsustainable.” Eventually they collapse into bankruptcy just like a business or household. The old saying applies. Things that can’t go on forever, won’t.
No matter. Predator banks want to prolong the game as long as possible, grab all the wealth they can, force debtor nations to sell state enterprises at distress prices, then get new business by lending to investors who buy them on the cheap. Will it work? Only if targeted countries go along. In the case of Iceland, its very future is at stake.
For centuries, banks created credit responsibly – loaning money for sound investments to debtors able to repay with interest. No one imagined a world like today’s with massive defaults occurring globally. In America, one-third of home mortgages are in “Negative Equity;” that is, “the mortgage exceeds the (property’s) market price pledged as collateral.”
US national debt tripled in one year, from $5 – $15 trillion, and according to some economists like John Williams, it’s much higher under GAAP accounting – including unfunded liabilities around $65.5 trillion, an amount exceeding world GDP through FY 2008, meaning America is bankrupt. Williams also puts unemployment at 19.8% by reengineering it to include discouraged and involuntary part-time workers and excluding fictitious birth-death rate ratio inclusions.
Blunt Truths about the “Dismantling of Industrial Capitalism”
Instead of extending credit to construct and grow them, financial oligarchs turned indebted nations into “casinos (through) debt-leveraged gambles,” redistributing wealth upward and creating “debt peonage for most citizens.” Even in America, nearly half the population has no net worth, and the gulf between richest and the rest is unprecedented.
“This is the unfair system that the world’s top creditors would export to Iceland – if they can convince its voters (and leaders) to accept neoliberal debt pyramiding as a way to get rich.” It’s not working throughout post-Soviet states that see it as the road to hell, if public riots are a gauge.
“Better alternatives (are) the only defense” as it’s impossible for “astronomically indebted economies to ‘work their way out of debt.’ ” Trying will “collapse the currency’s exchange rate,” divert huge amounts of revenue and property to creditors, and produce “a new kind of post-capitalist (unjust, unsustainable) non-production/consumpton economy” too gruesome to imagine or tolerate.
Iceland’s financial crisis is the result of lawless predation, an “international (austerity demanding) Ponzi scheme” under rigged market rules imposing public and private “asset stripping” to pay debt. A simple scheme transfers wealth.
Economies and populations are trapped on a “debt treadmill from which there is no escape. (Lenders) pile on credit and let debts grow (through) the ‘magic of compound interest,’ knowing that loans cannot be repaid – except by asset sell-offs.” They’re strip-mined through unending debt service so the parasite keeps feeding on its food source. The idea is to get it all, leaving empty hulks behind, then on to the new victims. It’s “euphemistically dubbed post-industrial wealth creation,” the kind that’s collapsing economies globally and destroying people. Obama is commander-in-chief of the process.
America as Lead Predator
It’s a viciously ugly scheme that’s “trapped other countries into a nightmarish system in which (they’re practically forced) to recycle their excess balance-of-payment dollar inflows back to the US,” mainly as loans to the Treasury.
“When foreign central banks receive dollars for their exports (or asset sales),” their choices are limited. “Congress won’t let them buy important domestic companies or resources,” or get paid with US gold reserves. The alternative is buy Treasuries and mortgage-backed securities like Fannie and Freddie debt.
Icelanders and other nations must remember that America is the world’s largest debtor, and as Adam Smith explained in The Wealth of Nations – “no nation ever repaid its debt,” and he never envisioned one large as America’s. We grow it by issuing paper for real assets and services. Until other countries demand more than confetti, this “Madoff-Ponzi scheme” will persist – for tiny states like Iceland (population 319,000 as of January 2009) until nothing is left to hand over.
Today’s road to riches isn’t through capital investment. It’s by “foreclos(ing) at pennies on the dollar and mak(ing) ‘capital gains’ by flipping property onto (central bank-inflated) world financial markets.” In a word, socializing risks, privatizing profits, preying on the weak, and getting “a free lunch” at public expense.
It’s a zero-sum game. One side’s gain is another’s loss, and when it matches America against Iceland, it’s easy exerting pressure, but no certainty it’ll prevail. As a sovereign state, Iceland can choose. More on that below.
Throughout the process, “financialized wealth is extractive, not productive….because loans, stocks and bonds are claims on wealth,” not the kind produced by making things.
This is Iceland’s dilemma. “Homeowners are paying tribute, not in taxes to (an occupier), in interest to (debt pyramid, international creditor) sponsors of “over-financialization,” aiming to strip-mine the country of everything, the way it’s worked in many developing states. “Yet many Icelanders are heading into this future voluntarily” with little understanding of the trap, propelling them toward debt peonage destitution under the guise of an IMF rescuer – like a spider to a fly.
It shouldn’t happen and won’t if countries refuse to be trapped and extricate themselves in time. Iceland is at a crossroads, still able to avoid what ruined Russia, other post-Soviet states, South Africa, and many other nations misjudging America and the IMF are saviors, not world class predators.
“Back to the Future” – A New Age of Neo-feudal Debt Bondage
Conventional banking works by extending credit in the form of interest-bearing loans and seizing collateral only in cases of default. Central banks were created to finance governments and commercial ones to “expand trade, related infrastructure, mining and shipping,” and develop other forms of business and industry.
More recently, “financial managers persuaded many countries to sell off public enterprises, like their water or energy supplies, mainly to pay debts or cut taxes” for the rich. It’s turned debtor nations into “tollbooth economies in which basic services become a vehicle to extract greater and greater portions of national income and wealth for the benefit of the few.”
It’s the opposite of how classical economists define “free markets.” Today, financial interests control them to extract labor and capital investment-produced surpluses – for themselves under the guise of “economic democracy.” The result “pushed much of the Third World into poverty since the 1960s,” and now the same cancer is heading everywhere.
Financial Warfare As Deadly As by Armies
Today’s financial strategy is “multilateral (with) the IMF (and World Bank) act(ing) as enforcer(s) for global creditors to appropriate the income of real estate, national infrastructure and industry” by masquerading as a helping hand and seducing borrowers to believe it.
Here’s how neo-feudal banking works. It doesn’t create credit for manufacturing. Retained earnings and equity do it. It “create(s) credit primarily against (existing) collateral, and by so doing, “extract(s) money from the economy (and) undercuts industrial growth for “short-term speculative gains.” This hegemony “took thousands of years to achieve,” and it wasn’t easy inducing nations into poverty through “debt pyramiding as good economic strategy.” It’s like prescribing gorging as a way to lose weight or a junk food diet to stay healthy.
Iceland made it worse by “protecting the claims of creditors against debtors,” including most wage-earners. As post-bubble home prices plunged, creditors held their own and even “strengthen(ed) their hand by increasing their take,” thus making a bad situation worse. Its people own a shrinking equity in their homes vis-a-vis bankers having the lion’s share. Its law shifts homeowners to “Negative Equity,” and it works by keeping people in the dark.
But it’s much the same in the US to hide the root cause of today’s crisis – Wall Street/Washington’s engineered housing and debt bubble fraud amounting to financial piracy of the greatest magnitude. In America, Iceland, and elsewhere it’s turned “ownership” societies into “loanship” debt trap ones. Until recently, it was unthinkable to let economies be crippled by interest payments. Now it’s de rigueur through clever manipulation to convince people and nations to go along with their own demise.
For Iceland, its debt burden threatens its national identity and “loss of its future” the way Adam Smith explained – through bankruptcy when it’s too great to repay. “Today, creditors and bondholders care about foreign economies only to the extent that they can charge (enough) interest (to) absorb their entire economic surplus.” Getting it all is today’s credo, and nothing too outlandish is irresponsible. Get in trouble. Socialism comes to the rescue, for bankers, not people or easy targets like Iceland.
Its “ethic is mutual aid and prosperity for all….a highly socialized attitude (yet how tragic that it’s) lead the nation to (buy into) the snake oil (of) debt peonage.” Economic growth never keeps pace with accruing debts that get recycled into greater ones, but end games are the same. “Debts that can’t be paid, won’t be,” while bankers too big to fail get bailed out at the expense of public interests and sound economics. Yet Hudson explains: “Creditor mismanagement is the most important problem that any country should strive to avert.”
Most important is to foster a free and open market of ideas, to extract the best and discard the others. But that’s not how Western societies work, especially banker-run ones. A “free market” for them is “free” of ideas laying bare their snake oil.
“Most societies throughout history provide(d) credit…. without oligarchy.” Today it’s the opposite. Predatory finance erased centuries of reform and did it at warp speed. As a result, our freedom is threatened and very close to being lost.
What’s needed is a return to “basics, and a call for transparent statistics,” socially progressive ideas “of a just society free of economic privilege, free of prices in excess of socially necessary costs of production and of rentier income and wealth without effort,” earned “in their sleep,” not through their labor.
It means wealth should be based on “what one creates – not land and natural resources, or monopoly privileges to extract income via control of roads, the right to create money and other natural monopolies.” Reform depends on purging this privilege. “The way to do it is to treat banking like transportation and broadcasting, as a public utility,” not something privatized for “rentiers (to) tax society” for what rightfully belongs to everyone.
In the hands of predators, progressive reforms are impossible as financial giants “preserve their special privileges by law, minimizing taxes on themselves by shifting the burden onto labor and industry.” Financialization:
— “raise(s) the cost of living (and) doing business;”
— frees bankers’ “major customers – mortgage borrowers – from taxation to leave (maximum) surplus (for) interest;”
— collects public sector revenue “by capitalizing it into interest charges” and inflating housing, other real estate, and other business prices;
— “shift(s) taxes onto labor and industry, thereby raising prices and undermining the competitive power of financialized economies.”
This is predation, the very opposite of “classical free market policy.” Keynes concluded his General Theory by calling for “euthanasia of the rentier.” His followers advocate banking as a public utility “to steer debt creation to fund growth in the means of production, not economic overhead by inflating property bubbles.” None of that’s in sight. Maybe someday after the inevitable demise of the current system that will eventually crumble under its own weight.
Lessons for Iceland and Other Nations
Iceland “is under financial attack from outside as well as within – by foreigners supported by a domestic banking class. To succeed (they need) to convince the population that all debt is productive, and that the economy benefits to the extent that its net worth rises (that is, make its asset values appear greater than its debt).”
The fact is that prices don’t fall, “and if they do, debts should (remain), even (at the expense of) negative equity.” Icelanders are being manipulated to believe they have “no alternative but to pay debts that a few insiders (accumulated, ones) that accrue interest when (they’re) unpaid.” In fact, demanded debt amounts exceed what the country can pay, but the strategy is to conceal this as long as possible “to proceed with the foreclosure and voluntary pre-bankruptcy sell-off of national assets to pay” predators.
What’s true for Iceland, holds everywhere Wall Street and the IMF target, and here’s the scheme:
— shrink economies;
— shift wealth and property upwards to a financial oligarchy; and
— price “labor and industry out of world markets as a result of the heavy financial charges built into (the) pricing system.”
Iceland is a “model test case for economic justice.” Hopefully it will “confront reality sooner than later” and not get trapped into perpetual debt bondage by succumbing to global creditor pressure or seduction. What benefits them harms people, and everyone needs to know it. Bankers “aim (for) a return to ‘normalcy,’ defined as new exponential (debt volume) growth” producing more destructive bubbles like the last ones.
Iceland must reject Wall Street’s medicine or perish, and the same holds elsewhere, including in America. Bankers, not nations or people, should take the pain. Hudson asks: “How can Iceland (or Hungary, Latvia, Ukraine, or many other nations) pay its debts without bankrupting itself, (in Iceland’s case) abandoning its social democracy and polarizing its (people) between a tiny creditor oligarchy and” everyone else? They’re threatened by “a new ruling class that will control (their) destiny for the next century” or beyond. It’s their choice to reject it and stay free.
Their “foreign currency loans should be denominated in domestic currency at written-down (and de-indexed) interest rates, or repudiated outright.” The guiding principle should be to annul debts taken out under (destructive and extractive) terms benefitting creditors at the expense of their prey.
They aim to dominate societies – “above all….to maximize the power of debt over labor. The worse the economy does, the stronger” they get. It’s a vicious cycle “recipe for economic suicide (from perpetual) debt peonage.” Iceland can be a test case model against it. It comes down to whether it will back its people or, like America, surrender to financial predators. It’s much the same globally, the result of the greatest ever economic crisis opportunity for plunder. The perpetrators love it. It’s high time they got their comeuppance.
Imagine tiny Iceland taking the lead and fighting back against what another former high-level Wall Street and government insider warns – Catherine Austin Fitts, Assistant Secretary of Housing and Federal Housing Commissioner under GHW Bush and Dillon Read & Co. Managing Director and board member.
In her latest quarterly review, she predicts that “Obama will do more to help bankers achieve centralized control and one world government than any (previous) US politician.” In less than three months in office, he’s shown bankers they can count on him – to the tune of trillions of dollars, further open-ended checkbook amounts on request, and global “diplomatic” pressure on targeted nations to surrender. It’s for public rage, tiny Iceland, and other over-indebted nations to demand “no more.” Hopefully enough of them have backbone to do it.
Unconstitutional-Presidential Powers Now Include Legislating?
Posted on February 20, 2010 by Fundamentals of Freedom
The presidents is now writing a healthcare bill that essentially will bypass the
senate fillibuster rule. As you know in order for a bill to get to a final vote it must be able to overcome a fillibuster
by the opposition, in this case from the Republicans. The president’s bill can be piggybacked onto a budget bill
that requires only fifty-one votes in the senate to pass. Essentially the president is trying to bypass the American
people who overwhelmingly do not want this healtcare bill. Sixty-one percent of voters say congress should scrap
the healthcare plans and start over.
The president is coming very close to violating the constitution if he hasn’t already. Article 1 and article 2 are very clear on which branch of government does what and the Executive branch clearly doesn’t write legislation. As a matter of fact there is nothing in article 2 that even comes slightly near what the president is trying to do. Either there is a complete misunderstanding of the constitution by the administration or they are purposely trying to subvert the constitution. Maybe these politicians think that they know the constituiton but really have many words in it that they have a wrong definition for or no definition at all.
We the people decide the course of our country not the administration or the special interests. Right now it is the labor unions, who have met with the president or his representatives, planned parenthood, psychiatry, and drug companies. Most of these groups have donated massively to the president’s campaign in 08. Sign the petition at the American Center for Law and Justice to scrap the healthcare bills and start over. We need to force the administration and congress to follow the constitution. Petitions work especially now after the election in Massachusetts.
At times it might seem like a neverending battle but these guys are not going to give up. Control of over 300 million people hangs in the balance and they know it. We have to push back just as hard as they are to hang the whole process up. And to win we must push back harder. Another look at the ad that got us a senate seat in Massachusetts could help to inspire us all. Remember November is right around the corner and the anti-constitutionalists are on the run.
The Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll for Wednesday shows that 22% of the nation's voters Strongly Approve of the way that Barack Obama is performing his role as President. Forty-three percent (43%) Strongly Disapprove giving Obama a Presidential Approval Index rating of -21. That matches the lowest Approval Index rating yet recorded for this President
Forty-two percent (42%) of Democrats Strongly Approve while 72% of Republicans Strongly Disapprove. Among those not affiliated with either major political party, 17% Strongly Approve and 45% Strongly Disapprove.
Fifty-seven percent (57%) believe that passage of the proposed health care legislation will hurt the economy. Just 25% believe it will help.
Sixty percent (60%) of parents believe that textbooks used by their students are more concerned about political correctness than accuracy.
Republicans hold a seven-point lead over Democrats on the Generic Congressional Ballot.
The Presidential Approval Index is calculated by subtracting the number who Strongly Disapprove from the number who Strongly Approve. It is updated daily at 9:30 a.m. Eastern (sign up for free daily e-mail update). Updates are also available on Twitter and Facebook.
Overall, 43% of voters say they at least somewhat approve of the President's performance. That, too matches the lowest level yet recorded for this President. Fifty-six percent (56%) disapprove.
The newly selected Republican nominee starts the general election with a ten-point lead in the Illinois Governor’s race. In Massachusetts, an interesting three-way race is developing with incumbent Deval Patrick stuck in the mid-30s. Rasmussen Reports has also released polls on the 2010 governor’s races in Arizona, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Florida, Kansas, Illinois, Massachusetts, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, Nebraska, New York, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina Wisconsin, and Texas.
Scott Rasmussen and Doug Schoen have an article in today’s Wall Street Journal explaining “Why Obama Can’t Move the Health Care Numbers.” Scott's new book, In Search of Self-Governance is available from Rasmussen Reports and at Amazon.com. If you'd like Scott to speak at your meeting, retreat, or conference, contact Premiere Speakers Bureau.
Forty-two percent (42%) favor the President’s health care plan while 53% are opposed. Most believe passage of the plan will increase the cost of health care. Fifty-five percent (55%) say that Congress should scrap the current health care legislation and start over.
See our 2010 Senate polling from Nevada, Colorado, Arkansas, Pennsylvania, California, Indiana, Wisconsin, Washington, Delaware, Florida, Illinois, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Missouri, New Hampshire, North Dakota, Ohio, Oregon, Connecticut, Illinois, North Carolina and Iowa.
The latest polling data can always be found on the Rasmussen Reports home page, updated with new data at least six times daily.
The New York Times Magazine has a feature on Rahm Emanuel that begins by describing how the White House Chief of Staff reacted to a Rasmussen Reports poll on the Massachusetts Senate race.
Scott Rasmussen has recently had several columns published in the Wall Street Journal addressing how President Obama is losing independent voters , health care reform, the President's approval ratings, and how Obama won the White House by campaigning like Ronald Reagan. You can also learn about his favorite place on earth or his time working with hockey legend Gordie Howe.
It is important to remember that the Rasmussen Reports job approval ratings are based upon a sample of likely voters. Some other firms base their approval ratings on samples of all adults. President Obama's numbers are always several points higher in a poll of adults rather than likely voters. That's because some of the President's most enthusiastic supporters, such as young adults, are less likely to turn out to vote. It is also important to check the details of question wording when comparing approval ratings from different firms.
Rasmussen Reports has been a pioneer in the use of automated telephone polling techniques, but many other firms still utilize their own operator-assisted technology (see methodology). Pollsters for Presidents Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton have cited our “unchallenged record for both integrity and accuracy.”
Data from the Washington Post confirms that Rasmussen Reports was well ahead of other media coverage on the Massachusetts Senate race.
In the 2009 New Jersey Governor’s race, automated polls tended to be more accurate than operator-assisted polling techniques. On reviewing the state polling results from 2009, Mickey Kaus offered this assessment, “If you have a choice between Rasmussen and, say, the prestigious N.Y. Times, go with Rasmussen!”
During Election 2008, liberal blogger Nate Silver said that the Rasmussen tracking poll “would probably be the one I'd want with me on a desert island."
In 2008, Obama won 53%-46% and our final poll showed Obama winning 52% to 46%. While we were pleased with the final result, Rasmussen Reports was especially pleased with the stability of our results. On every single day for the last six weeks of the campaign, our daily tracking showed Obama with a stable and solid lead attracting more than 50% of the vote.
An analysis by Pollster.com partner Charles Franklin “found that despite identically sized three-day samples, the Rasmussen daily tracking poll is less variable than Gallup.” During Election 2008, the Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll was the least volatile of all those tracking the race.
We also have provided a summary of our 2008 state-by-state Presidential results for your review.
In 2004 George W. Bush received 50.7% of the vote while John Kerry earned 48.3%. Rasmussen Reports was the only firm to project both candidates’ totals within half a percentage point by projecting that Bush would win 50.2% to 48.5%.
Pollster.com founder Mark Blumenthal noted that “independent analyses from the National Council on Public Polls, the American Association for Public Opinion Research, the Pew Research Center, the Wall Street Journal and FiveThirtyEight.com have all shown that the horse-race numbers produced by automated telephone surveys did at least as well as those from conventional live-interviewer surveys in predicting election outcomes.”
Daily tracking results are collected via telephone surveys of 500 likely voters per night and reported on a three-day rolling average basis. The margin of sampling error—for the full sample of 1,500 Likely Voters--is +/- 3 percentage points with a 95% level of confidence. Results are also compiled on a full-week basis and crosstabs for full-week results are available for Premium Members. Like all polling firms, Rasmussen Reports weights its data to reflect the population at large
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A review of last week’s key polls is posted each Saturday morning. Other stats on Obama are updated daily on the Rasmussen Reports Obama By the Numbers page. We also invite you to review other recent demographic highlights from the tracking polls. To get a sense of longer-term trends, check out our month-by-month review of the President’s numbers.
Obama has come out in favor of forcing people arrested to submit DNA to a national database.
“President Barack Obama’s embrace of a national database to store the DNA of people arrested but not necessarily convicted of a crime is heartening to backers of the policy but disappointing to criminal-justice reformers, who view it as an invasion of privacy,” reports Politico. “Others also worry the practice would adversely affect minorities.”
It would affect all Americans regardless of race, creed, color, nationality, etc. It would also be a violation of the Fourth Amendment.
Obama made his opinion known during an interview with John Walsh, the host of the TV show America’s Most Wanted. Walsh is known for his anti-crime activism, which he became involved with following the murder of his son in 1981 (see video below).
“We have 18 states who are taking DNA upon arrest,” Walsh said. “It’s no different than fingerprinting or a booking photo. … Since those states have been doing it, it has cleared 200 people that are innocent from jail.”
Obama agreed. “It’s the right thing to do,” he replied. “This is where the national registry becomes so important, because what you have is individual states — they may have a database, but if they’re not sharing it with the state next door, you’ve got a guy from Illinois driving over into Indiana, and they’re not talking to each other.”
Obama did not say if he believes a DNA sample should be removed upon acquittal or if charges are dropped.
A national DNA database is another manifestation of the state posing a threat to our liberties. Mr. Walsh may be interested in keeping tabs on sex offenders and criminals, but the state has other motives — the tracking and surveillance of citizens.
A national DNA database would compliment other efforts by the government to violate our liberty. In 2005 it was first revealed that the NSA has been secretly intercepting Americans’ phone calls and Internet communications (in fact, the NSA has intercepted the personal communications of Americans for decades).
In April of 2009, the FBI joined 15 states that collect DNA samples from those awaiting trial. The FBI currently has a DNA database with 6.7 million profiles and plans to accelerate its growth rate from 80,000 new entries a year to 1.2 million by 2012 — a 15-fold increase, according to the New York Times.
Since September 11, 2001, under the guise of a phony war against government manufactured terrorism, the FBI has infiltrated and monitored entirely legal political organizations, including the Tea Party movement.
On October 31, 2001, then Attorney General John Ashcroft issued a regulation that authorized the monitoring of communications between inmates in the custody of the Bureau of Prisons and their attorneys including those who have not been convicted of any crimes.
The Patriot Act nullified large sections of the Bill of Rights. Under the rubric of a global war on terrorism the executive has been granted sweeping unconstitutional authority to issue executive orders and wage war without congressional consent.
In February, the Justice Department argued in federal court that the FBI and other police agencies don’t need to obtain a search warrant to learn the locations of Americans’ cell phones. “When the government acquires historical cell location information, it effectively commandeers our cell phones and turns them into electronic trackers that report, without our knowledge or consent, where we have been and how long we have spent there,” Susan Freiwald, a law professor at the University of San Francisco told Declan McCullagh of CNet.
As reported earlier this week, Sens. Charles Schumer (D-NY) and Lindsey Graham (R-SC) have proposed legislation that, if passed, will require all working Americans to carry biometric ID cards containing fingerprint records and other personal information. The effort is a cynical attempt to establish a national biometric ID card program under the guise of preventing illegal immigration.
The effort to create a DNA database is already under way in several states. In 2004, Californians overwhelmingly passed a ballot measure requiring DNA testing, usually by a swab inside the cheek, for all felony arrests and some others. And in New York City, Mayor Michael Bloomberg has sought to go even further, proposing DNA tests for everyone arrested in the city, even for misdemeanors.
Criminologist James Fox of Northeastern University in Boston told Politico he would rather see Obama deal with ballistic fingerprinting and repeal of the Tiahrt Amendment, which limits gun tracing.
The the Tiahrt Amendment prohibits the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives from releasing information from its firearms trace database to anyone other than a law enforcement agency or prosecutor in connection with a criminal investigation.
FOIA Review: More Government Secrecy Under Obama Than Bush 160310ObamaAn Associated Press review of Freedom of Information Act reports filed by 17 major government agencies has revealed that, despite Barack Obama’s promise to make government more transparent, more information is now being withheld from the public.
The review finds that during Obama’s first year in office, a FOIA provision that allows the government to conceal details of its internal decision-making was invoked more frequently than during the outgoing year of the Bush administration.
The provision to refuse the release of internal documents was cited some 70,779 times during the financial year of 2009, compared with just 47,395 times in 2008.
“Obama specifically directed agencies to stop using that exemption so frequently, but that directive appears to have been widely ignored.” the AP report states.
Indeed, according to the review, every one of the nine different exemptions under FOIA law was invoked more by Obama agencies in 2009 than by Bush departments the previous year.
In total, federal agencies used exemptions to avoid releasing material at least 466,872 times in 2009, over 154,000 times more than the year before, despite the fact that there were some 48,000 less FOIA requests than in 2008.
The 17 agencies reviewed were the departments of Agriculture, Commerce, Defense, FOIA Review: More Government Secrecy Under Obama Than Bush
Another promise of “change” miserably fails
Steve Watson
Prisonplanet.com
Tuesday, March 16th, 2010
FOIA Review: More Government Secrecy Under Obama Than Bush 160310ObamaAn Associated Press review of Freedom of Information Act reports filed by 17 major government agencies has revealed that, despite Barack Obama’s promise to make government more transparent, more information is now being withheld from the public.
The review finds that during Obama’s first year in office, a FOIA provision that allows the government to conceal details of its internal decision-making was invoked more frequently than during the outgoing year of the Bush administration.
The provision to refuse the release of internal documents was cited some 70,779 times during the financial year of 2009, compared with just 47,395 times in 2008.
“Obama specifically directed agencies to stop using that exemption so frequently, but that directive appears to have been widely ignored.” the AP report states.
Indeed, according to the review, every one of the nine different exemptions under FOIA law was invoked more by Obama agencies in 2009 than by Bush departments the previous year.
In total, federal agencies used exemptions to avoid releasing material at least 466,872 times in 2009, over 154,000 times more than the year before, despite the fact that there were some 48,000 less FOIA requests than in 2008.
The 17 agencies reviewed were the departments of Agriculture, Commerce, Defense, Education, Energy, Health and Human Services, Homeland Security, Housing and Urban Development, Interior, Justice, Labor, State, Transportation, Treasury and Veterans Affairs; the Environmental Protection Agency; and the Federal Reserve Board.
FOIA Review: More Government Secrecy Under Obama Than Bush FOTR 340x1692
The day after he was inaugurated, Obama announced that he had ordered government agencies to fully comply with the intended use of Freedom of Information Act law in order to ensure greater transparency and avoid charges of secrecy.
“All agencies should adopt a presumption in favor of disclosure, in order to renew their commitment to the principles embodied in FOIA, and to usher in a new era of open Government,” Obama wrote in a memo to federal agencies on January 21, 2009.
“The presumption of disclosure should be applied to all decisions involving FOIA.” he added.
“The presumption of disclosure also means that agencies should take affirmative steps to make information public,” the new president continued.
“They should not wait for specific requests from the public. All agencies should use modern technology to inform citizens about what is known and down by their Government. Disclosure should be timely.”
Clearly these instructions have been ignored by the agencies in question and unenforced by the incumbent administration.
The news comes on the back of further revelations that the Obama Administration has threatened to veto a congressional intelligence bill owing to the fact that the legislation would subject intelligence agencies to greater scrutiny and oversight.
The proposed bill would allow for a General Accountability Office review of US intelligence agencies, which are currently immune from Congressional audit.
So much for the promise of open government then.cation, Energy, Health and Human Services, Homeland Security, Housing and Urban Development, Interior, Justice, Labor, State, Transportation, Treasury and Veterans Affairs; the Environmental Protection Agency; and the Federal Reserve Board.
FOIA Review: More Government Secrecy Under Obama Than Bush FOTR 340x1692
The day after he was inaugurated, Obama announced that he had ordered government agencies to fully comply with the intended use of Freedom of Information Act law in order to ensure greater transparency and avoid charges of secrecy.
“All agencies should adopt a presumption in favor of disclosure, in order to renew their commitment to the principles embodied in FOIA, and to usher in a new era of open Government,” Obama wrote in a memo to federal agencies on January 21, 2009.
“The presumption of disclosure should be applied to all decisions involving FOIA.” he added.
“The presumption of disclosure also means that agencies should take affirmative steps to make information public,” the new president continued.
“They should not wait for specific requests from the public. All agencies should use modern technology to inform citizens about what is known and down by their Government. Disclosure should be timely.”
Clearly these instructions have been ignored by the agencies in question and unenforced by the incumbent administration.
The news comes on the back of further revelations that the Obama Administration has threatened to veto a congressional intelligence bill owing to the fact that the legislation would subject intelligence agencies to greater scrutiny and oversight.
The proposed bill would allow for a General Accountability Office review of US intelligence agencies, which are currently immune from Congressional audit.
The Democrats are assaulting the very pillars of our democracy. As the debate on Obamacare
reaches the long, painful end, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is confronting a political nightmare.
She may not have the 216 votes necessary to pass the Senate's health care bill in the House.
Hence, Mrs. Pelosi and her congressional Democratic allies are seriously considering using a
procedural ruse to circumvent the traditional constitutional process. Led by Rep. Louise M.
Slaughter, New York Democrat and chairman of the House Rules Committee, the new plan -
called the "Slaughter Solution" - is not to pass the Senate version on an up-or-down vote.
Rather, it is to have the House "deem" that the legislation was passed and then have members
vote directly on a series of "sidecar" amendments to fix the things it does not like.
This would enable House Democrats to avoid going on the record voting for provisions in the
Senate bill - the "Cornhusker Kickback," the "Louisiana Purchase," the tax on high-cost so-called
"Cadillac" insurance plans - that are reviled by the public or labor-union bosses. If the reconciliation fixes pass, the House can send the Senate bill to President Obama for his signature without ever having had a formal up-or-down vote on the underlying legislation.
Many Democrats could claim they opposed the Senate bill while allowing it to pass. This would be an unprecedented violation of our democratic norms and procedures, established since the inception of the republic. Article 1, Section 7 of the Constitution stipulates that for any bill to become a law, it must pass both the House of Representatives and the Senate. That is, not be "deemed" to have passed, but actually be voted on with the support of the required majority. The bill must contain the exact same language in both chambers - and in the version signed by the president - to be a legitimate law. This is why the House and Senate have a conference committee to iron out differences of competing versions. This is Civics 101.
The Slaughter Solution is a dagger aimed at the heart of our system of checks and balances. It would enable the Democrats to establish an ominous precedent: The lawmaking process can be rigged to ensure the passage of any legislation without democratic accountability or even a congressional majority. It is the road to a soft tyranny. James Madison must be turning in his grave.
The first round of the political fight over health care has gone to those who would violate our rights — but the final victory can still be ours.
March 22, 2010 - by Paul Hsieh
Now that the House of Representatives has passed the
Senate version of ObamaCare, what should Americans
expect? If you are concerned about the future of your
health care and the future of this country, here are a few
things to prepare for in the short, medium, and long terms.
In the short term, Senate Republicans could attempt to
derail the process by modifying any attempted
'“reconciliation bill,” thus forcing another House vote.
We may also see various legal challenges to the
constitutionality of ObamaCare. In a Washington Post
piece from March 21, 2010, Georgetown University law
professor Randy Barnett offers a nice rundown of the
possible constitutional challenges and their likelihood
of success.
In the medium term, Americans who disagreed with their
congressman’s vote on ObamaCare will have to express
their opinions at the polls. President Obama demanded
that Congress pass his agenda, saying that if American disagreed then, “that’s what elections are for.”
As Kimberley Strassel noted in the Wall Street Journal, Democratic leaders have repeatedly told moderate Blue Dogs that current voter opposition to ObamaCare would fade by November, and that Democratic congressmen would instead be rewarded at the polls if they sided with the president and proved that the Democrats could “govern.”
Hence, anyone who made a public promise to oppose their legislator in the November 2010 election if they voted for ObamaCare should follow through on that promise, and as publicly as possible. (Similarly, anyone who promised to support their congressman if they voted against ObamaCare should do so.)
Pelosi and company are banking on Americans having a short memory on this issue. If tea party protesters and like-minded Americans drop the ball and prove them right, then everyone will know that the tea party movement is just a toothless political “paper tiger.”
Come November 2010, politicians and pundits will learn one of two lessons. Either they will learn that the tea party protesters are all talk and no walk — or they will learn that the tea party protesters are a force to be reckoned with, and that anyone who crosses them does so at great political peril. Which lesson they learn will be up to us.
Hence, the medium term task for Americans who promised action in November will be to follow through on those promises.
Finally, in the long term, the primary battle will be one of ideas.
Some provisions of ObamaCare will take effect immediately (such as new insurance regulations), whereas others will not take effect for a few years (such as mandatory insurance).
Problems already occurring under the similar Massachusetts plan of “universal coverage” — such as rising costs to the government and long waits to see primary care and specialist physicians — will inevitably unfold at the national level. When they do, it will be crucial for Americans to place the blame where it properly belongs — namely on the government takeover of health care and health insurance.
When the Massachusetts plan started failing, a ferocious battle of ideas erupted as to the root cause of the problems of skyrocketing costs and reduced access to medical care.
Many liberals argued that these problems “proved” that there were insufficient government controls. They blamed the highly regulated residual free market elements of the Massachusetts plan. Hence, their proposed solution was a complete government takeover of health care in the form of a “single-payer” system.
Others argued that the problems were caused by the government controls. Hence, the proper solution would be to repeal those controls and implement genuine free market reforms.
Supporters of the free market must not allow the liberals to evade the responsibility for problems they’ve created and instead wrongly shift the blame onto the free market.
As George Mason University professor Peter Boettke once noted:
If you bound the arms and legs of gold-medal swimmer Michael Phelps, weighed him down with chains, threw him in a pool and he sank, you wouldn’t call it a “failure of swimming.” So, when markets have been weighted down by inept and excessive regulation, why call this a “failure of capitalism”?
Similarly, we should not allow the coming failures of ObamaCare to be portrayed as failures of the free market (thus “justifying” a fully socialized medical system), when they will actually be failures of government controls imposed on the free market.
Whichever side wins this upcoming battle of ideas will determine the ultimate future of health care in this country.
America was founded on the principle of individual rights, including the rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. The first round of the political battle over health care has gone to those who would violate those rights. But this is still our country. If Americans commit to fighting for their lives and their freedom, then the final victory can still be ours.ObamaCare: The Coming Battles
The first round of the political fight over health care has gone to those who would violate our rights — but the final victory can still be ours.
March 22, 2010 - by Paul Hsieh
Now that the House of Representatives has passed the Senate version of ObamaCare, what should Americans expect? If you are concerned about the future of your health care and the future of this country, here are a few things to prepare for in the short, medium, and long terms.
In the short term, Senate Republicans could attempt to derail the process by modifying any attempted “reconciliation bill,” thus forcing another House vote.
We may also see various legal challenges to the constitutionality of ObamaCare. In a Washington Post piece from March 21, 2010, Georgetown University law professor Randy Barnett offers a nice rundown of the possible constitutional challenges and their likelihood of success.
In the medium term, Americans who disagreed with their congressman’s vote on ObamaCare will have to express their opinions at the polls. President Obama demanded that Congress pass his agenda, saying that if American disagreed then, “that’s what elections are for.”
As Kimberley Strassel noted in the Wall Street Journal, Democratic leaders have repeatedly told moderate Blue Dogs that current voter opposition to ObamaCare would fade by November, and that Democratic congressmen would instead be rewarded at the polls if they sided with the president and proved that the Democrats could “govern.”
Hence, anyone who made a public promise to oppose their legislator in the November 2010 election if they voted for ObamaCare should follow through on that promise, and as publicly as possible. (Similarly, anyone who promised to support their congressman if they voted against ObamaCare should do so.)
Pelosi and company are banking on Americans having a short memory on this issue. If tea party protesters and like-minded Americans drop the ball and prove them right, then everyone will know that the tea party movement is just a toothless political “paper tiger.”
Come November 2010, politicians and pundits will learn one of two lessons. Either they will learn that the tea party protesters are all talk and no walk — or they will learn that the tea party protesters are a force to be reckoned with, and that anyone who crosses them does so at great political peril. Which lesson they learn will be up to us.
Hence, the medium term task for Americans who promised action in November will be to follow through on those promises.
Finally, in the long term, the primary battle will be one of ideas.
Some provisions of ObamaCare will take effect immediately (such as new insurance regulations), whereas others will not take effect for a few years (such as mandatory insurance).
Problems already occurring under the similar Massachusetts plan of “universal coverage” — such as rising costs to the government and long waits to see primary care and specialist physicians — will inevitably unfold at the national level. When they do, it will be crucial for Americans to place the blame where it properly belongs — namely on the government takeover of health care and health insurance.
When the Massachusetts plan started failing, a ferocious battle of ideas erupted as to the root cause of the problems of skyrocketing costs and reduced access to medical care.
Many liberals argued that these problems “proved” that there were insufficient government controls. They blamed the highly regulated residual free market elements of the Massachusetts plan. Hence, their proposed solution was a complete government takeover of health care in the form of a “single-payer” system.
Others argued that the problems were caused by the government controls. Hence, the proper solution would be to repeal those controls and implement genuine free market reforms.
Supporters of the free market must not allow the liberals to evade the responsibility for problems they’ve created and instead wrongly shift the blame onto the free market.
As George Mason University professor Peter Boettke once noted:
If you bound the arms and legs of gold-medal swimmer Michael Phelps, weighed him down with chains, threw him in a pool and he sank, you wouldn’t call it a “failure of swimming.” So, when markets have been weighted down by inept and excessive regulation, why call this a “failure of capitalism”?
Similarly, we should not allow the coming failures of ObamaCare to be portrayed as failures of the free market (thus “justifying” a fully socialized medical system), when they will actually be failures of government controls imposed on the free market.
Whichever side wins this upcoming battle of ideas will determine the ultimate future of health care in this country.
America was founded on the principle of individual rights, including the rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. The first round of the political battle over health care has gone to those who would violate those rights. But this is still our country. If Americans commit to fighting for their lives and their freedom, then the final victory can still be ours.
Despite intense Republican objections, President Obama on Saturday used recess appointments to fill some administration posts, including Craig Becker to the National Labor Relations Board.
In this March 23, 2010 file photo, President Obama and Vice President Biden smile in the East Room of the White House, before the president signed the health care bill. (AP)
Despite intense Republican objections, President Obama on Saturday used recess appointments to fill 15 administration posts without Senate confirmation, including Craig Becker to the National Labor Relations Board.
By filling the jobs while Congress is in recess, Obama gets around Senate confirmation. Obama justified the move by charging Republicans with playing politics with his administration nominees.
"The United States Senate has the responsibility to approve or disapprove of my nominees. But if, in the interest of scoring political points, Republicans in the Senate refuse to exercise that responsibility, I must act in the interest of the American people and exercise my authority to fill these positions on an interim basis," he said in a written statement.
All 41 Senate Republicans wrote Obama this week urging him not to use a recess appointment for Becker, a former top lawyer with Service Employees International Union and the AFL-CIO, whose nomination was rejected by the Senate last month, 52-43.
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce also wrote Obama on behalf of 20 business groups that opposed Becker's nomination and decried the recess appointment.
"This recess appointment disregards the Senate's bipartisan rejection of Craig Becker's nomination to the NLRB," Chamber Vice President Randel Johnson said in a written statement.
"Overriding the will of the Senate and providing this special interest payback contradicts the president's claim to change the tone in Washington," he said. "The business community should be on red alert for radical changes that could significantly impair the ability of America's job creators to compete."
But White House spokeswoman Jen Psaki cast the opposition of Becker's nomination as part of an "unprecedented level of obstruction in the Senate" that had left "key economic positions unfilled, especially at time when our country is recovering from the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression."
Psaki said the five-member labor board had been trying to operate with only two members.
"The roadblocks we've seen in the Senate have left some government agencies like the National Labor Relations Board and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission impaired in fulfilling their mission," she said in a statement. "These agencies can now get back to working for the American people."
The Senate's top Democrat, Harry Reid, welcomed Obama's move. "Regrettably, Senate Republicans have dedicated themselves to a failed strategy to cripple President Obama's economic initiatives by stalling key administration nominees at every turn," said Reid, the majority leader from Nevada.
But Republicans say Becker isn't working for all Americans.
"Craig Becker stands far outside the mainstream of NLRB nominees," Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, said in a written statement Thursday. "Given the bipartisan opposition to his nomination, the administration would be wise to not circumvent the will of the Senate by recess appointing him to the NLRB.
"There is no place on this powerful board for someone who believes that card check legislation -- getting rid of the secret union ballot -- can be enacted surreptitiously through regulation."
Sen. John McCain said the Senate has already delivered its verdict on Becker's ability to serve impartially on the labor board.
"If this administration chooses to recess appoint Mr. Becker, it would be just another example of putting the will of one special interest group over the will of the American people," he said.
Republicans wanted Obama to scrap Becker's nomination and appoint one Democrat, Mark Pearce, and one Republican, Brian Lewis, to the other vacant seats. Pearce was one of the 15 nominees appointed Saturday.
Democratic groups, such as the AFL-CIO, have said Becker's an experienced advocate for worker rights and have decried GOP "obstructionism."
But Obama didn't specifically address the controversy over Becker in his statement Saturday. Instead, he focused on the nominees still awaiting a vote in the Senate.
"At a time of economic emergency, two top appointees to the Department of Treasury have been held up for nearly six months," he said. "I simply cannot allow partisan politics to stand in the way of the basic functioning of government."
Obama noted that former President George W. Bush made 15 recess appointments by this point in his presidency, "but he was not facing the same level of obstruction."
According to the White House, Bush had five nominees pending on the Senate floor by the same point in his first term compared with Obama's 77 nominees.
A U.S. Army flight surgeon who posted a video indicating his complete rejection of all orders from the military unless Barack Obama documents his eligibility to occupy the Oval Office is now refusing an "unofficial" suggestion from the Army for a medical evaluation.
Lt. Col. Terry Lakin is the highest-ranking and first active-duty officer to refuse to obey orders based on President Obama's eligibility.
WND reported this week the Army was hinting that Lt. Col Terry Lakin should undergo a brain scan and medical review.
A spokeswoman involved with the developing case said the recommendation was delivered to Lakin by an unnamed officer who implied those higher up the chain of command thought it was a good idea.
The suggestion was described to WND by spokeswoman Margaret Calhoun Hemenway, a veteran Washington appointee and now volunteer spokeswoman, as being presented in a "solicitous" manner.
Officially, the U.S. Army says it has no plans for formal action at this point against the officer. But Calhoun Hemenway told WND that Lakin's "no" meant "no."
"He is not taking any suggested medical evaluation or brain scan. He is refusing to obey all orders including deployment orders," she confirmed.
"It is interesting this suggestion of a medical exam should arise now given he was only a couple of weeks from deployment and obviously judged to be fit for deployment with his bags packed," she said.
See the movie Obama does not want you to see: Own the DVD that probes this unprecedented presidential eligibility mystery!
But as WND reported, the controversy raises the prospect that the government may be unwilling to pursue a prosecution because of the possible ramifications – which could include a defense lawyer's demand for a court-ordered discovery process that would target Obama's historical documentation
Even participants in a forum on the left-leaning Huffington Post website seemed to agree in part.
"Freakin' Brilliant!" said one. "They can't court-martial him [without] the defense getting the judge to order the the (sic) birth-certificate be produced! Either Obama will have to produce or they can't prosecute. Genius."
Another forum page poster on the same site said the military of days gone by never would have allowed such statements.
"During my military service within the Army (in the 1970s, 80s and 90s) before retirement, this type of behavior would NEVER have been tolerated and most of all, would never have made the MSM news cycle. That's because Larkin (sic) would be immediately remanded for a general court-martial and would likely face pretrial confinement by the first general officer within his chain-of-command."
"It's troubling that the Army has not prosecuted this man immediately instead of making an MSM event out of it."
Army Dr. Terry Lakin, the flight surgeon for 3rd Squadron, 4th Cavalry Regiment, examines the partially amputated finger of an Afghan man who assists in collecting unexploded ordnance at Kandahar Airfield. Lakin was selected as the Army Medical Department's Flight Surgeon of the Year for 2004.
As WND reported, Lakin is an active-duty flight surgeon charged with caring for Army Chief of Staff Gen. George Casey's pilots and air crew.
He said he's refusing all orders until Obama releases his long-form, hospital-generated birth certificate to prove his eligibility to serve as commander in chief.
"I feel I have no choice but the distasteful one of inviting my own court martial," Lakin said in a statement. "The Constitution matters. The truth matters."
He continued, "For the first time in all my years of service to our great nation, and at great peril to my career and future, I am choosing to disobey what I believe are illegal orders, including an order to deploy to Afghanistan for my second tour of duty there. I will disobey my orders to deploy because I – and I believe all servicemen and women and the American people – deserve the truth about President Obama's constitutional eligibility to the office of the presidency and the commander in chief.
"If he is ineligible, then my orders – and indeed all orders – are illegal because all orders have their origin with the commander in chief as handed down through the chain of command."
Lakin is not the first active-duty officer to raise the challenge. Others have included Army doctor Capt. Connie Rhodes and Army reservist Maj. Stefan Cook. But Lakin is the highest-ranking officer to raise the question.
In a statement yesterday to WND, George Wright of Army Public Affairs said the Army has "no reaction" to Lakin's statements, and "at this point, the Army will take no formal action."
He said, "Lt. Col. Lakin has stated his intent to violate Articles 87 and 92 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice, but has not done so. Whether his actions to date violate any law or policy is for his chain of command to determine."
Wright said the Army had no information on in-channel concerns Lakin reported raising twice during 2009. There was "no comment" on whether Obama needs to document his eligibility to serve as president under the U.S. Constitution's requirement that the commander in chief be a "natural born citizen."
Although a "natural born citizen" is undefined in the Constitution, many legal analysts believe the requirement was put there to prevent dual allegiances on the part of the president. Some believe those with dual citizenship would be ineligible. Obama wrote in his book his father was a subject to the United Kingdom, making Obama likely a dual citizen.
"Lt. Col Lakin is free to express his personal views. The Army has no comment on his concerns, nor the views that he espoused," Wright told WND.
But the background already has been assembled in the case, should there be a prosecution, for the defense to come to court with specific demands for proof of the validity of the chain of command, up to the commander in chief.
Support for Lakin is being generated at the Safeguard Our Constitution.com website, established by the American Patriot Foundation.
One of the organizers behind the group, serving in emeritus status, is John Hemenway, an attorney who previously fought in the U.S. court system on behalf of a retired military officer, Gregory S. Hollister, who also questioned Obama's eligibility.
The case ultimately was dismissed by Judge James Robertson who ruled that the dispute had been "twittered" during the 2008 election campaign.
In that opinion, Robertson sarcastically wrote: "The plaintiff says that he is a retired Air Force colonel who continues to owe fealty to his commander in chief (because he might possibly be recalled to duty) and who is tortured by uncertainty as to whether he would have to obey orders from Barack Obama because it has not been proven – to the colonel's satisfaction – that Mr. Obama is a native-born American citizen, qualified under the Constitution to be president.
"The issue of the president's citizenship was raised, vetted, blogged, texted, twittered, and otherwise massaged by America's vigilant citizenry during Mr. Obama's two-year-campaign for the presidency, but this plaintiff wants it resolved by a court," Robertson wrote.
The judge also suggested sanctions against Hemenway for bringing the case, and Hemenway responded that process then would provide him with a right to a discovery hearing to see documentation regarding the judge's statements – not supported by any evidence introduced into the case – that Obama was properly "vetted."
Hemenway warned at the time, "If the court persists in pressing Rule 11 procedures against Hemenway, then Hemenway should be allowed all of the discovery pertinent to the procedures as court precedents have permitted in the past.
"The court has referred to a number of facts outside of the record of this particular case and, therefore, the undersigned is particularly entitled to a hearing to get the truth of those matters into the record. This may require the court to authorize some discovery," Hemenway said.
WND columnist Vox Day earlier wrote about this very scenario, calling it a "Get out of war" free card.
The comments followed the case of Cook, the reservist who challenged his deployment orders over questions about their legality under Obama.
"Rather than contesting the suit," Day wrote, "the Army took the highly peculiar step of revoking the major's deployment order, suggesting that the Pentagon generals are not entirely confident that they can demonstrate the legitimacy of their purported commander in chief.
"The Pentagon's decision to back down rather than risk exposing Obama's birth records to the public means that every single American soldier, sailor, pilot and Marine now holds a 'get out of war free' card. Not only every deployment order, but every order issued from an officer in the line of command can now be challenged in the knowledge that the top brass are afraid to respond for fear that their commander could be exposed for a fraud.," he wrote at the time.
"It is one thing for Obama to deny the curiosity of the American public by hiding behind the courts. It is very much another for him to deny the right of the men and women of the Army, Navy, Air Force and Marines, who are sworn to risk their lives upholding the Constitution of the United States of America, to be certain their orders are legitimate," he said.
Calhoun Hemenway, who separately writes for FamilySecurityMatters.org, told WND she is an unofficial spokeswoman for the case and that Lakin's legal counselors have suggested he not comment a great deal at this point while he is on leave and before he returns to his duties.
Calhoun Hemenway, a former White House appointee serving in the Department of Defense and at NASA, said the Lakin case presents a problem for the Army, since it cannot simply "rescind" orders as it has in previous military disputes over orders under Obama's chain of command. That's because Lakin has indicated plans to reject all orders.
In his video message now posted on YouTube, Lakin, an 18-year veteran, personally pleads with the president to stop withholding the key document which would put to rest many of the doubts that continue to linger more than a year into Obama's term.
"President Obama, I ask you to respect and uphold the Constitution. Be transparent and show your honesty and integrity. Release your original, signed birth certificate, if you have one, thus proving your birth on American soil, and thus assure the American people that you are lawfully eligible to hold the office of the presidency and serve as commander in chief of the Armed Forces."
Obama's actual response to those who question his eligibility to be president under the Constitution's requirement that the U.S. president be a "natural born citizen" has been to dispatch both private and tax-funded attorneys to prevent anyone from gaining access to his documentation.
Besides Obama's actual birth documentation, the still-concealed documentation for him includes kindergarten records, Punahou school records, Occidental College records, Columbia University records, Columbia thesis, Harvard Law School records, Harvard Law Review articles, scholarly articles from the University of Chicago, passport, medical records, his files from his years as an Illinois state senator, his Illinois State Bar Association records, any baptism records, and his adoption records.
WND has reported on a multitude of cases that have been brought over the issue of Obama's eligibility. Some are by critics who have doubts about whether he was born in Hawaii in 1961 as he has written, and others are from those who question whether the framers of the Constitution specifically excluded dual citizens – Obama's father was a subject of the British crown at Obama's birth – from being eligible for the office.
The issue has prompted a number of state legislatures to work on proposals that would require presidential candidates to submit proof of their eligibility. And a similar proposal has been introduced in Congress by Rep. Bill Posey, R-Fla.
The Constitution, Article 2, Section 1, states, "No Person except a natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the Office of President."
However, none of the cases filed to date has been successful in reaching the plateau of legal discovery, so that information about Obama's birth could be obtained.
The White House has not replied to numerous requests for comment.
"Where's The Birth Certificate?" billboard helps light up the night at the Mandalay Bay resort on the Las Vegas Strip.
Because of the dearth of information about Obama's eligibility, WND founder Joseph Farah has launched a campaign to raise contributions to post billboards asking a simple question: "Where's the birth certificate?"
The campaign followed a petition that has collected more than 498,000 signatures demanding proof of his eligibility, the availability of yard signs raising the question and the production of permanent, detachable magnetic bumper stickers asking the question.
The "certification of live birth" posted online and widely touted as "Obama's birth certificate" does not in any way prove he was born in Hawaii, since the same "short-form" document is easily obtainable for children not born in Hawaii. The true "long-form" birth certificate – which includes information such as the name of the birth hospital and attending physician – is the only document that can prove Obama was born in Hawaii, but to date he has not permitted its release for public or press scrutiny.
Oddly, though congressional hearings were held to determine whether Sen. John McCain was constitutionally eligible to be president as a "natural born citizen," no controlling legal authority ever sought to verify Obama's claim to a Hawaiian birth.
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OBAMA IS LIKE A DESTRUCTIVE CHILD WHO TAKES APART A
WATCH AND THEN CAN’T PUT IT BACK TOGETHER AGAIN. HE
HAS TAKEN APART THE CAR INDUSTRY, PLACING IT UNDER
FEDERAL CONTROL. HE IS DISMANTLING THE BEST HEALTH-
CARE SYSTEM IN THE WORLD, REPLACING IT WITH SOCIALIZED
MEDICINE. AND TODAY, HE STARTED DESTROYING OUR
MILITARY BY SIGNING AN INSANE NUCLEAR TREATY WITH
RUSSIA.
THIS TREATY, THE WORK OF THE MENTALLY DISORDERED , WILL MEAN A 30% REDUCTION IN OUR NUCLEAR ARSENAL AND A STEEP REDUCTION IN OUR SUBMARINES AND STRATEGIC BOMBERS. THAT’S ON TOP OF THE FACT THAT OBAMA HAS ALREADY SLASHED THE DEFENSE BUDGET AND STOPPED A COMPREHENSIVE MISSILE DEFENSE SYSTEM. NOW, IN THE NAME OF DIPLOMACY, OBAMA WANTS TO DESTROY OUR NUKES JUST WHEN IRAN AND NORTH KOREA ARE BUILDING THEIRS. OBAMA CLAIMS THIS TREATY WILL COAX IRAN INTO DISCONTINUING ITS NUKE PROGRAM. THAT’S CRAZY. THE HITLER OF IRAN WANTS THESE WEAPONS TO INTIMIDATE THE UNITED STATES AND DESTROY ISRAEL. THIS MEANINGLESS PIECE OF PAPER WILL NOT STOP HIM.
AND WHAT ABOUT RUSSIA? ANYONE WHO THINKS THEY’LL KEEP THEIR WORD IS CRAZY. RUSSIA HAS A HISTORY OF RENEGGING ON NUKE AGREEMENTS. IT’S IMPOSSIBLE TO VERIFY HOW MANY THEY’VE DESTROYED, AND THEY’VE ALREADY SAID THAT THEY CAN PULL OUT OF THE AGREEMENT AT ANY TIME. FURTHERMORE, BOTH RUSSIA AND CHINA ARE IN THE PROCESS OF MODERNIZING THEIR NUKES. MOST OF RUSSIA’S NUCLEAR ARSENAL IS AGING AND OUTDATED. IF WE CONTINUED AS WE ARE, RUSSIA WOULD FADE AS A NUCLEAR POWER. THIS AGREEMENT HELPS THEM! HOW MUCH OF OUR OWN ARSENAL IS OUTDATED? OBAMA ISN’T SAYING.
OBAMA DID SAY TODAY THAT THE SPREAD OF NUCLEAR WEAPONS TO MORE STATES IS AN UNACCEPTABLE RISK TO GLOBAL SECURITY. AND YET THIS INSANE TREATY INCREASES THAT RISK. OBAMA ALSO SAID TODAY THAT WHILE THE TREATY WAS A GOOD FIRST STEP FORWARD, IT’S THE FIRST IN A LONG WAY FORWARD. “IT WILL SET THE STAGE FOR FURTHER CUTS.” FURTHER CUTS. OBAMA DOESN’T JUST WANT TO REDUCE OUR ARSENAL. HE WANTS TO ELIMINATE IT COMPLETELY. HE IS OUR DESTROYER-IN-CHIEF. AND THE ONE REMAINING CHANCE TO END HIS AGENDA OF APPEASEMENT IS THE U.S. SENATE, WHICH MUST RATIFY THE TREATY BY A TWO-THIRDS MAJORITY. HE COULD BE STOPPED THERE, BUT WHERE IS THE REPUBLICAN OPPOSITION? EACH DAY, MORE AND MORE, IT’S AS IF A HOSTILE FOREIGN POWER HAS TAKEN OVER THE COUNTRY.
A Kenyan lawmaker told the nation's Parliament last month that Barack Obama was born in Africa and is therefore "not even a native American."
During debate over the draft of a new Kenyan constitution, James Orengo, the country's minister of lands and a member of parliament for the Ugenya constituency, cited America's election of a Kenyan-born president as an example of what can be accomplished when diverse peoples unite:
"If America was living in a situation where they feared ethnicity and did not see itself as a multiparty state or nation," Orengo posited, "how could a young man born here in Kenya, who is not even a native American, become the president of America?"
Orengo held up the U.S. as a country no longer "living in the past," since Americans elected a Kenyan-born president without regard to "ethnic consideration and objectives."
A new strategy has been unveiled to demand answers to Obama's eligibility questions. See how you can help.
Debate is then recorded in the Kenyan government's official March 25, 2010, hansard – a traditional name for printed transcripts of a parliamentary debate – as continuing with no other MPs mentioning or attempting to correct Orengo's comments about Obama.
WND has reported, several other sources – including National Public Radio – have claimed Obama's birthplace as Kenya prior to his election as president.
WND also reported when a video appeared in which Michelle Obama said her husband's "home country" was Kenya, though her comments didn't specifically suggest his birth there.
The video, posted April 3 on YouTube and forwarded by a score of Internet e-mails, shows Michelle Obama saying, "When we took our trip to Africa and visited his home country in Kenya, we took a public HIV test."
The reference drew attention because of the claim made in numerous lawsuits and other challenges to Obama's occupancy of the Oval Office that he is not eligible to be president under the requirement of Article 2, Section 1 of the Constitution that the president be a "natural born citizen."
But the NPR reference and Michelle Obama's comment are far from the only ones of their kind.
At one point, there were reports that even Obama's grandmother claimed being in attendance at his birth in Africa.
According to a compilation of images at a military forum, another reference was made in 2008 in the Nigerian Observer.
Under a byline from Solomon Asowata and a Washington dateline, the report says, "Americans will today go to the polls to elect their next president with Democratic Party candidate, Senator Barack Obama largely favoured to win. The Kenyan-born Senator will, however, face a stiff competition from his Republican counterpart…"
A commentary at The Post & Email website said, "It is no wonder that many doubt Obama's claim of a Hawaiian birth."
It cited another report from African Travel Magazine that said, "As Kenyan born U.S. Senator Barack Obama jets into Kenya today as part of his African tour, concerns have once again been raised on the security preparations for other visitors and residents. ...."
The Post & Email commentary also cited a report from Indonesia Matters that includes similar references.
WND documented earlier several other statements linking Obama and Kenya.
These included the apparently archived article from the Sunday Standard in Kenya.
The report begins, "Kenyan-born US Senate hopeful, Barrack (sic) Obama, appeared set to take over the Illinois Senate seat after his main rival, Jack Ryan, dropped out of the race on Friday night amid a furor over lurid sex club allegations."
The article is credited to the wire service Associated Press at the bottom of the page. However, the article could not be found either in the AP archives available to the public online or the archive on the newspaper's website. WND telephone calls and e-mails to the newspaper did not generate a response.
Last year, an African news site and an MSNBC broadcaster referred to President Obama's birthplace as being outside of the United States.
Network correspondent Mara Schiavocampo was reporting on the celebratory atmosphere in Accra, Ghana, immediately prior to Obama's visit to the west African nation.
Interviewing a person who appeared to be a shop operator, she stated, "Barack Obama is Kenyan … but Ghanaians are still proud of him."
so, a report at Modern Ghana posted in advance of the president's visit cited his birthplace on the continent of Africa.
"For Ghana, Obama's visit will be a celebration of another milestone in African history as it hosts the first-ever African-American President on this presidential visit to the continent of his birth," the report said.
WND has reported on dozens of legal challenges to Obama's status as a "natural born citizen." The Constitution, Article 2, Section 1, states, "No Person except a natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the Office of President."
Some of the lawsuits question whether he was actually born in Hawaii, as he insists. If he was born out of the country, Obama's American mother, the suits contend, was too young at the time of his birth to confer American citizenship to her son under the law at the time.
Other challenges have focused on Obama's citizenship through his father, a Kenyan subject to the jurisdiction of the United Kingdom at the time of his birth, thus making him a dual citizen. The cases contend the framers of the Constitution excluded dual citizens from qualifying as natural born.
Complicating the situation is Obama's decision to spend sums exceeding $1.7 million to avoid releasing an original long-form state birth certificate that would put to rest the questions.
WND also has reported that among the documentation not yet available for Obama includes his kindergarten records, Punahou school records, Occidental College records, Columbia University records, Columbia thesis, Harvard Law School records, Harvard Law Review articles, scholarly articles from the University of Chicago, passport, medical records, files from his years as an Illinois state senator, his Illinois State Bar Association records, any baptism records and his adoption records.
Because of the dearth of information about Obama's eligibility, WND founder Joseph Farah has launched a campaign to raise contributions to post billboards asking a simple question: "Where's the birth certificate?"
Administration spokesman Robert Gibbs’ angry retort
that left-wing critics of President Obama ought to be “
drug tested” because they are “crazy” marks a crucial
benchmark in the accelerating evisceration of Obama’s
public support, even amongst liberals who, having exalted
Obama as some kind of savior, are now realizing that he
is merely a servant to the banking elite.
Gibbs’ meltdown occurred during an interview with The Hill newspaper, in which he slammed the “professional left” for criticizing Obama for failing to live up to his ideological promises.
“I hear these people saying he’s like George Bush. Those people ought to be drug tested,” Gibbs said. “I mean, it’s crazy.”
While some of the criticism coming from the left is undoubtedly over side-issues like gay marriage or gays in the military, much of it centers around Obama’s continuation and indeed intensification of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as his failure to close Guantanamo Bay, in addition to his cosying up to Wall Street while abandoning Main Street as the economic decline worsens.
Our warnings right at the beginning of the Obama presidency, explored at length in Alex Jones’ documentary The Obama Deception, are now coming to fruition, as Americans from across the entire political spectrum come to the understanding that they’ve been the victims of a monumental hoax.
The HIll article leaps to Obama’s defense, claiming he is “Overseeing the end of the Iraq war, with the U.S. on schedule to end its combat operations by the end of this month.”
However, as we have previously documented, Obama now has more American troops deployed than at any time under Bush. The date for withdrawing troops from Iraq is continually pushed back, and even then it is admitted that a “residual force” of tens of thousands of troops will remain to occupy the country.
In addition, Obama has also expanded the Bush-era bombing raids into Pakistan.
Of the troops that do come home from Iraq, the vast majority look like they’ll be needed for the next invasion, should Obama support an Israeli attack on Iran as many expect in the upcoming months.
As we have previously documented, Obama has broken every major promise he made during the campaign trail, from ending warrentless secret surveillance of American citizens, to bringing Bush administration officials to justice for the illegal torture program, to closing the Guantanamo Bay detention camp.
With the millions of Americans who were hypnotized into voting for the corporate marketing creation Obama now waking up to the fact that they were lied to and that Barry Soetoro is nothing more than a sock puppet for the elite, the administration can be expected to become increasingly desperate in its bid to cling on to power.
As we have warned, a war on Iran could prove to be the perfect distraction from Obama’s domestic troubles, rallying the country around an external threat and reversing his plummeting approval ratings.
Fresh food that lasts from eFoods Direct
Ironic it may be that the “peace candidate” will be forced to play the war card as a last resort to rescue his political dynasty, but he can count on the support of an army of neo-cons who have been calling for an attack on Iran since the early years of the Bush presidency.
Similarly, as Robert Shapiro, former senior advisor to President Bill Clinton, made clear in a Financial Times article last month, a terror attack on the scale of 9/11 or the Oklahoma City bombing would do wonders to address Obama’s “growing credibility crisis” and reinstate Americans’ belief in his leadership.
Whether the string pullers behind Obama will make a late and desperate lunge to rescue his tattered credibility, or whether they will merely hand over the baton to another neo-con to continue the same globalist agenda, remains to be seen. But what we can now say for certain is that Brand Obama has been completely demolished, with the reality behind the facade exposed for all to see, and Obama’s political legacy being forever characterized by deceit, deception and misplaced hope.ing evisceration of Obama’s public support, even amongst liberals who, having exalted Obama as some kind of savior, are now realizing that he is merely a servant to the banking elite.
Gibbs’ meltdown occurred during an interview with The Hill newspaper, in which he slammed the “professional left” for criticizing Obama for failing to live up to his ideological promises.
“I hear these people saying he’s like George Bush. Those people ought to be drug tested,” Gibbs said. “I mean, it’s crazy.”
While some of the criticism coming from the left is undoubtedly over side-issues like gay marriage or gays in the military, much of it centers around Obama’s continuation and indeed intensification of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as his failure to close Guantanamo Bay, in addition to his cosying up to Wall Street while abandoning Main Street as the economic decline worsens.
Our warnings right at the beginning of the Obama presidency, explored at length in Alex Jones’ documentary The Obama Deception, are now coming to fruition, as Americans from across the entire political spectrum come to the understanding that they’ve been the victims of a monumental hoax.
The HIll article leaps to Obama’s defense, claiming he is “Overseeing the end of the Iraq war, with the U.S. on schedule to end its combat operations by the end of this month.”
However, as we have previously documented, Obama now has more American troops deployed than at any time under Bush. The date for withdrawing troops from Iraq is continually pushed back, and even then it is admitted that a “residual force” of tens of thousands of troops will remain to occupy the country.
In addition, Obama has also expanded the Bush-era bombing raids into Pakistan.
Of the troops that do come home from Iraq, the vast majority look like they’ll be needed for the next invasion, should Obama support an Israeli attack on Iran as many expect in the upcoming months.
As we have previously documented, Obama has broken every major promise he made during the campaign trail, from ending warrentless secret surveillance of American citizens, to bringing Bush administration officials to justice for the illegal torture program, to closing the Guantanamo Bay detention camp.
With the millions of Americans who were hypnotized into voting for the corporate marketing creation Obama now waking up to the fact that they were lied to and that Barry Soetoro is nothing more than a sock puppet for the elite, the administration can be expected to become increasingly desperate in its bid to cling on to power.
As we have warned, a war on Iran could prove to be the perfect distraction from Obama’s domestic troubles, rallying the country around an external threat and reversing his plummeting approval ratings.
Fresh food that lasts from eFoods Direct
Ironic it may be that the “peace candidate” will be forced to play the war card as a last resort to rescue his political dynasty, but he can count on the support of an army of neo-cons who have been calling for an attack on Iran since the early years of the Bush presidency.
Similarly, as Robert Shapiro, former senior advisor to President Bill Clinton, made clear in a Financial Times article last month, a terror attack on the scale of 9/11 or the Oklahoma City bombing would do wonders to address Obama’s “growing credibility crisis” and reinstate Americans’ belief in his leadership.
Whether the string pullers behind Obama will make a late and desperate lunge to rescue his tattered credibility, or whether they will merely hand over the baton to another neo-con to continue the same globalist agenda, remains to be seen. But what we can now say for certain is that Brand Obama has been completely demolished, with the reality behind the facade exposed for all to see, and Obama’s political legacy being forever characterized by deceit, deception and misplaced hope.
Will Obama be forced to rely on an engineered pre-election surprise
to rescue his Presidency?
Paul Joseph Watson
Prison Planet.com
Monday, August 9, 2010
While Barry Soetoro’s family lavish themselves at a luxury Spanish
resort amidst deepening economic turmoil, back home Obama’s
political dynasty crashes and burns as his approval ratings plunge
to a record low of 41 per cent with less than a few months to go
before the October midterm elections.
Obama has come under widespread criticism for preaching austerity
and financial discipline even as his wife Michelle suns herself at an
opulent resort in the Costa del Sol region while parading around in
expensive designer clothing.
As the economy worsens and top financial experts openly talk of
American entering a second great depression, Obama’s approval ratings
continue to head south in a hurry.
As we exposed in the Obama Deception, the manufactured populist euphoria behind the crowning of Soetoro was always likely to rapidly deflate once it became apparent that Obama was the ultimate puppet, a vacuous servant of the bankers and the elite to whom he owes his entire political dynasty.
Having A Supply Of Healthy Foods That Last Just Makes Sense
Just 41 per cent approved of the way Obama was handling the job in a recent USA TODAY/Gallup Poll, the lowest figure since Soetoro took office in January 2009.
Similarly, questions over Soetoro’s dubious origins have not abated. According to a recent CNN poll, 43 per cent of Americans think Obama was definitely or probably not born in the United States.
For someone whose political career is so obviously sinking out of sight, Obama seems remarkably relaxed about it, an ominous portend that the people who pull his strings have lined up a helpful pre-election surprise as a means of rallying the American people back around their fallen commander in chief.
On one side of the scale, some are speculating that Obama could announce a gigantic bailout of Main Street in the form of debt relief for millions of Americans whose homes are now worth less than their mortgages. This promised giveaway would likely reinvigorate support for Obama from the millions of gullible idiots who voted for him in the first place while proclaiming that all their problems would be solved by a Christ-like Obama who would pay their mortgage and gas bills.
Of course, the rhetoric behind any such giveaway would be fantastic enough to buy votes in the short term, but the reality behind such a program would soon disintegrate in the aftermath of the midterms.
However, on the extreme end of the scale some are warning, or even advocating, that Obama will launch an attack on Iran and risk setting off world war three as a ploy through which to keep himself in power. Just as the 9/11 attack saw Bush’s approval ratings soar into the 90’s, rallying Americans around an external threat could be just the ticket for an administration that has completely polarized the country and whose actions have led to the creation of fierce political opposition groups like the Tea Party.
There can be little doubt that unless an artificially engineered “surprise event” helps Obama turn things around, the losses for the Democrats will be drastic.
As Bruce Drake points out today, “The party that controls the White House usually loses House seats in the off-year contests and the losses are bigger when the President’s job approval rating is below 50 percent.”
In 1994, when President Bill Clinton’s approval rating stood at 46 per cent, Republicans picked up 53 seats to recapture the House after it had been in Democratic hands for most of the previous 40 years.
The next three months will provide a clear answer as to whether Barry Soetoro’s teleprompter reading days are over, or if there is to be a dramatic sting in the tail that will preserve Obama’s political capital for just enough longer to give him a shot at staying in the White House for another term.
