HOW DUMB DO YOU THINK I AM? by Michael Hammond.. (Diary).. Friday, Feb. 10, 2012..

How Dumb Do You Think I Am?

  

Posted by Michael Hammond (Diary)

Friday, February 10th at 5:12PM EST

86 Comments

From the diaries by Erick

We don’t have all the specifics. But it is pretty apparent that Obama’s “deal” on contraceptives is a trick.

As to Catholic institutions, Catholic hospitals and universities would pay insurance companies premiums, which would pay for contraceptives and abortifacients. Evil doesn’t become good because it’s laundered through a third party.

But, says HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, premiums would go down because, inter alia, you would not have to provide health services to those pesky babies who would have been born, had you not aborted them.

But if this was a theological defense, it would have applied, whether or not contraceptives and abortifacients were specified in the insurance policy.

Incidentally, the 98-99% contraception usage figure which is being thrown about unchallenged?  It is from the virulently pro-abortion Alan Guttmacher Institute.

Finally, what about individual Catholic or fundamentalist or other employers who have religious objections to abortions and contraceptives? The “deal” would throw them under the bus.

Unlike some in the Catholic hierarchy, I vigorously fought against ObamaCare and predicted the abortion-related problems they are now facing.  Am I now to go to prison for exercising my conscience? And does the First Amendment apply any less to my religious beliefs.

by Michael E. Hammond, former General Counsel Senate Steering Committee 1978-89 and a Dunbarton, New Hampshire resident.

New Year's Resolution: Take Back America from Obama and the RINO's By Michael Oberndorf Dec. 31, 2011

New Year’s Resolution: Take Back America from Obama and the RINOs

December 31, 2011 By Michael Oberndorf 1 Comment

inShare1

Barack Hussein Obama-Soetoro is a sociopathic liar. He says what he thinks his audience on a given day wants to hear, promising the sun and the moon. The next day, he will say the total opposite, if that’s what the new audience wants. He’s not a flip-flopper; he’s a compulsive liar. However, there is one promise he made, back during the 2008 campaign, that it appears he’s not going back on and is actually going to keep. Unfortunately for the American people, it’s a promise that will cost us dearly, and possible destroy us as a viable economic nation.
In an interview on November 2, 2008, Obama-Soetoro outlined his plan to impose the so-called cap-and-trade system, a plan devised by radical inventors of man-made global warming, that he said would bankrupt the coal and coal-fired energy industry by imposing hugely expensive environmental restrictions on them. As it turned out, the American people, led by the Tea Parties, pressured Congress to kill this bald-faced attempt to wreck the economy.
Not to be deterred though, by the wishes of the people they are supposed to serve, the Marxists and neo-fascists in the Obama-Soetoro administration have made it clear that they intend to ignore the Constitution, end-run Congress, and impose their job-killing, economy-destroying agenda on America, whether Americans like it or not. And they have chosen the EPA – the unconstitutional Environmental Protection Agency – as the vehicle to do this.
The most recent among many draconian outrages imposed by the rogue EPA are a set of regulations called MACT – Maximum Achievable Control Technology. They are Barack Hussein Obama-Soetoro’s green and red Christmas gift to the nation. It is estimated they will result in the closing of some 60 coal-fired power plants, huge rises in the cost of electricity, and the direct destruction of at least 3,000 jobs. The ripple effect from this, though, is likely to be tens of thousands of lost jobs and the human misery caused by this, and billions in economic losses. Merry Christmas, America!

These regulations require that power plants eliminate 90 percent of their mercury emissions. However, power plant emissions of mercury, reduced over the years by energy producers, amount to a mere 0.5 percent of the mercury in the atmosphere. Most atmospheric mercury occurs naturally or is produced by industry in Communist China. The simple truth is that this regulation will have virtually no effect on the environment, but will indeed, as promised by Barack Hussein Obama-Soetoro, bankrupt the coal and coal-fired electricity production industries.
As usual, the “science” involved is questionable, at best, and flat-out phony, if one prefers not to sugar-coat. All of the environmental “crises” since the 1960s have been manufactured by the radical Left. They have been based on lies and faked, twisted, and made-up data. America’s environment, outside the Democrat-controlled urban areas, is one of the cleanest in the world. Over 90 percent of the country is farmland or forest or undeveloped open space. I repeat: There is no environmental crisis.
The EPA has a long history of draconian over-regulation. Nowhere in the Constitution is such an agency, with power to control the use by Americans of their private land, authorized in any way, shape, or form. Yet it’s allowed to continue its destructive rampages, generally unchecked and unimpeded by Congress, and in spite of horror stories galore. The EPA needs to be defunded, immediately, and then shut down and dismantled as quickly as is possible.
As has become the norm of late, this situation is not just the result of an out-of-control executive branch running wild, but of the failure of Congress to do their Constitutionally mandated duty to rein them in. It cannot be emphasized enough, repeated too many times: We need to clean out Congress in 2012, replacing the corrupt, spineless parasites infesting both houses with honest and honorable men and women who will adhere to the Constitution – the supreme law of the land. We need to elect public servants who will commit to shutting down unconstitutional, and therefore illegal, agencies and departments such as the EPA, the Department of Education, the Department of Housing and Urban Development, etc.
Not only would this restore sanity to government, it would eliminate most of the spending that has allowed Democrats and RINO establishment Republicans to force Americans into debt to the tune of over $15,000,000,000,000 dollars. It would also eliminate the massive economic burden of regulations whose sole purpose is to give government control over private property and business, and justify an ever-expanding, increasingly opulent bureaucracy.
New Year’s Resolution: Take Back America!

Make No Mistake, This is NOW Obama's Economy (Aug. 12, 2011)

It is an understatement to say that President Obama now owns the bad economy. He and his minions are actually creating and perpetuating it, policy by policy, decision by decision.

At an Aug. 4 press briefing, White House spokesman Jay Carney said: “The White House does not create jobs.” That may be strictly true, but the guy who lives there can cause jobs to be lost and make the recovery more difficult — at which President Obama has excelled.

There is a fundamental principle that seems to have eluded the president and his men: A recovering economy that creates jobs needs to encourage innovation and the creation of wealth.

The president and his minions are going to learn some lessons the hard way.

First, that policies have consequences. In his study of the 1,000 years of the world’s economic growth, the late British economist Angus Maddison observed that the “golden age” for worldwide growth was from 1950 to 1973, with per-capita GDP increasing 3% per year.

In 1973 growth slowed in Western Europe and Japan: “Some slowdown in these countries was warranted, but policy failings made it bigger than it need have been.”

Second, that as my mother used to say, actions speak louder than words. Merely saying that you’re not hostile to business doesn’t make it so.

And although redistribution of income might satisfy liberals’ desire for “social justice,” it doesn’t stimulate the economy or create private-sector jobs.

11th Circuit Court of Appeals, Ruled Obama Care Unconstitutional.... Politico News by Jennifer Haberkorn Aug. 12, 2011

Court says mandate unconstitutional By: Jennifer Haberkorn August 12, 2011 01:29 PM EDT

The 11th Circuit Court of Appeals on Friday ruled that the health care reform law's requirement that nearly all Americans buy insurance is unconstitutional, a striking blow to the legislation that increases the odds the Supreme Court will choose to review the law. The suit was brought by 26 states — nearly all led by Republican governors and attorneys general — and the National Federation of Independent Business. The Department of Justice is expected to appeal. The 2-1 ruling marks the first time a judge appointed by a Democrat has voted to strike down the mandate. Judge Frank Hull, who was nominated by former President Bill Clinton, joined Chief Judge Joel Dubina, who was appointed by George H.W. Bush, to strike down the mandate. Judge Stanley Marcus, in a dissenting opinion, said the mandate is constitutional. He was also appointed by Clinton. The panel partially upheld a ruling issued in January by Judge Roger Vinson, who struck down the entire health reform law. However, the 11th Circuit said that the rest of the legislation can stand even if the mandate is unconstitutional. The panel also said that the law's expansion of Medicaid is constitutional, ruling against the states.  The Department of Justice won't say yet whether it will appeal to the Supreme Court or ask the entire 11th Circuit to review the decision.  The majority of the panel said they couldn't uphold the mandate because there would be no limit to Congress's powers if they did. Opponents of the law have frequently argued that if Congress can require people to buy insurance, they can force people to do anything else, such as buy broccoli or a gym membership for their health benefits. Vinson cited this broccoli argument in his sweeping ruling striking down the entire law. "We have not found any generally applicable, judicially enforceable limiting principle that would permit us to uphold the mandate without obliterating the boundaries inherent in the system of enumerated congressional powers," Dubina and Hull wrote in an expansive, 200-page ruling. "'Uniqueness' is not a constitutional principle in any antecedent Supreme Court decision." The federal government argued that the law  regulates only how people obtain health care — something all Americans will need at some point in their lives. They say the uniqueness of the market makes health care different than broccoli or gym purchases. "People are seeking this good already," Neal Katyal, the acting solicitor general, said during oral arguments. "It's about the failure to pay, not the failure to buy." During oral arguments in Atlanta in June, the panel spent a significant amount of time discussing whether the mandate is "severable" from the rest of the law. Hull in particular asked the federal government three times where the line should be. The ruling comes six weeks after the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the mandate in a similar suit, giving the health law a 1-1 record at the circuit level. The 4th Circuit Court of Appeals, which heard two related cases in May, has not issued its rulings yet. The White House downplayed the ruling, pointing to the 6th Circuit and lower courts that have upheld the law. "There has been no shortage of court cases regarding the constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act. Before today, four courts, including the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals, examined the health reform law and found it constitutional," Stephanie Cutter, a deputy senior adviser, wrote in a White House blog post. "Today's ruling is one of many decisions on the Affordable Care Act that we will see in the weeks and months ahead. In the end, we are confident the act will ultimately be upheld as constitutional." The split rulings make the suit a strong contender to be taken up by the Supreme Court in the fall term. The Thomas More Law Center, which lost the 6th Circuit ruling, has already filed its appeal. In this case, the federal government will have 90 days to appeal to the Supreme Court — in a process called certiorari — or ask the entire 11th Circuit to review the ruling. "I can't think of any time a federal law was struck down — let alone a federal law of this scope — that the United States sought 'certiorari' and the cert was denied," said Brad Joondeph, a University of Santa Clara law professor who follows the health law cases atacalitigationblog.blogspot.com. Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi, who inherited the lawsuit from her predecessor, Bill McCollum, praised the ruling. "Today we have prevailed in preventing Congress from infringing on the individual liberty protected by the U.S. Constitution," she said in a statement. Republican presidential candidates, who argue the mandate is unconstitutional, are already praising the ruling. Rep. Michele Bachmann told reporters in Iowa that she had "helped to make that argument about the unconstitutionality of the individual mandate." "Effectively giving a national voice to those arguments — the court has listened to those arguments," Bachmann said. Marcus, who wrote the dissent, railed against the decision, calling it "wooden, formalistic and myopic." He said that Congress has shown time and again that it has power over the national health care markets, especially in its ability to set prices under Medicare, its regulatory authority over insurers and drugmakers and its ability to issue rules that cut across both how care is delivered and covered. "Both the congressional intent to link the two and the empirical relation between the purchase of health insurance and the consumption of health care services are clear," Marcus wrote. The ruling is likely to worry not only supporters of the health law but also the insurance industry. The panel said all of the rest of the law — including its ban on insurers denying patients because of pre-existing conditions — can stand. Insurers — and the federal government — have argued that the two must be tied together. Insurers in particular have said that premiums would have to increase if they were required to accept everyone without the mandate. "Throughout the health care reform debate there was broad agreement that enacting guarantee issue and community rating would cause significant disruption and skyrocketing costs unless all Americans have coverage," said Robert Zirkelbach, a spokesman for America's Health Insurance Plans. "States that have implemented these laws without covering everyone have seen a rise in insurance premiums, a reduction of individual insurance enrollment and no significant decrease in the number of uninsured." Matt DoBias contributed to this report.

© 2011 POLITICO LLC

US Rating Cut by S&P for first time on Deficit Reduction Plan.. Aug 5, 2011.

US Rating Cut by S&P for First Time on Deficit Reduction Pact

Friday, 05 Aug 2011 08:49 PM

Share:

More . . .

A A |

Email Us |

Print |

Forward Article

The U.S. had its AAA credit rating downgraded for the first time by Standard & Poor's on concern spending cuts agreed on by lawmakers to raise the nation's borrowing limit won't be enough to reduce record deficits.

S&P dropped the ranking one level to AA+, after warning on July 14 that it would reduce the rating in the absence of a "credible" plan to lower deficits even if the nation's $14.3 trillion debt limit was lifted. The U.S. was awarded the top credit ranking by New York-based S&P in 1941. It kept the outlook at "negative."

'The downgrade reflects our opinion that the fiscal consolidation plan that Congress and the Administration recently agreed to falls short of what, in our view, would be necessary to stabilize the government's medium-term debt dynamics," S&P said in a statement today.

Demand for Treasuries has surged even with the specter of a downgrade as investors saw few alternatives to the traditional refuge during times of risk as concern increased global growth is slowing and Europe's sovereign debt crisis is spreading. The action could still hurt the U.S. economy over time by increasing the cost of mortgages, auto loans and other types of lending tied to the interest rates paid on Treasuries. JPMorgan Chase & Co. estimated that a downgrade would raise the nation's borrowing costs by $100 billion a year.

Moody's, Fitch

"It's a reflection of the fact that we haven't done enough to get our fiscal house in the order," Anthony Valeri, market strategist in San Diego at LPL Financial, which oversees $340 billion, said in an interview before the downgrade. "Sovereign credit quality is going to remain under pressure for years to come."
___________________________________________________________

'You Opened My Eyes to the Catastrophic Enormity of This Financial Debacle'
Debt ceiling 'medicine will become the poison,' according to famed economist. Brace for economic meltdown. Watch the Aftershock Survival Summit Now, See the Evidence.

_____________________________________________________________

Moody's Investors Service and Fitch Ratings affirmed their AAA credit ratings on Aug. 2, the day President Barack Obama signed a bill that ended the debt-ceiling impasse that pushed the Treasury to the edge of default. Moody's and Fitch also said that downgrades were possible if lawmakers fail to enact debt reduction measures and the economy weakens.

The measure raised the nation's debt ceiling until 2013 and threatens automatic spending cuts to enforce $2.4 trillion in spending reductions over the next 10 years.

S&P put the U.S. government on notice on April 18 that it risks losing its AAA rating unless lawmakers agree on a plan by 2013 to reduce budget deficits and the national debt. S&P indicated last month that anything less than $4 trillion in cuts would jeopardize the rating.

'Grand Bargain'

"A grand bargain of that nature would signal the seriousness of policy makers to address the fiscal situation in the U.S.," John Chambers, chairman of S&P's sovereign rating committee, said in a video interview distributed by the ratings firm on July 28.

Obama has said a rating cut may hurt the broader economy by increasing consumer borrowing costs tied to Treasury rates. An increase in Treasury yields of 50 basis points would reduce U.S. economic growth by about 0.4 percentage points, JPMorgan said in a report, citing Federal Reserve research and data.

"The hope is that we could keep Treasuries pure, limited to interest rate risk," Mohamed El-Erian, chief executive and co-chief investment officer at Pacific Investment Management Co., said in a Bloomberg Television interview before the announcement. "The minute you start downgrading away from AAA, you take small steps toward credit risk and that is something any country would like to avoid."

Relative Yields

Treasury yields average about 0.70 percentage point less than the rest of the world's sovereign debt markets, Bank of America Merrill Lynch indexes show. The difference has expanded from 0.15 percentage point in January.

Investors from China to the U.K. are lending money to the U.S. government for a decade at the lowest rates of the year. For many of them, there are few alternatives outside the U.S., no matter what its credit rating.

"Yields are low in the face of a downgrade because there is nowhere else for people to go if they don't buy Treasuries because they want to be in safe dollar assets," Carl Lantz, head of interest-rate strategy at Credit Suisse Group AG, one of 20 primary dealers that trade directly with the Federal Reserve, said before the announcement.

Ten-year Treasury yields fell to as low as 2.33 percent in New York, the least since October.

Bond Dealers

The committee of bond dealers and investors that advises the U.S. Treasury said the dollar's status as the world's reserve currency "appears to be slipping" in quarterly feedback presented to the government on Aug. 3. The U.S. currency's portion of global currency reserves dropped to 60.7 percent in the period ended March 31, from a peak of 72.7 percent in 2001, International Monetary Fund data show.

"The idea of a reserve currency is that it is built on strength, not typically that it is 'best among poor choices'," page 35 of the presentation made by one member of the Treasury Borrowing Advisory Committee, which includes representatives from firms ranging from Goldman Sachs Group Inc. to Pimco. "The fact that there are not currently viable alternatives to the U.S. dollar is a hollow victory and perhaps portends a deteriorating fate."

Members of the TBAC, as the committee is known, which met Aug. 2 in Washington, also discussed the implications of a downgrade of the U.S. sovereign credit rating. "None of the members thought that a downgrade was imminent," according to minutes of the meeting released by the Treasury.

A U.S. credit-rating cut would likely raise the nation's borrowing costs by increasing Treasury yields by 60 basis points to 70 basis points over the "medium term," JPMorgan's Terry Belton said on a July 26 conference call hosted by the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association. The U.S. spent $414 billion on interest expense in fiscal 2010, or 2.7 percent of gross domestic product, according to Treasury Department data.

"That impact on Treasury rates is significant," Belton, global head of fixed-income strategy at JPMorgan, said during the call. "That $100 billion a year is money being used for higher interest rates and that's money being taken away from other goods and services."

© Copyright 2011 Bloomberg News. All rights reserved.

Read more on Newsmax.com: US Rating Cut by S&P for First Time on Deficit Reduction Pact
Important: Do You Support Pres. Obama's Re-Election? Vote Here Now!

Why Capitalism Is Worth Defending

Why Capitalism Is Worth Defending
As Obama demonizes the wealthy and pitches a dozen plans to restructure the economy, opponents of this program need a reminder of what exactly we're fighting for. We are resisting bureaucracy, central planning, and encroachments on our freedom and communities. Yet this does not get to the heart of the matter. We are not only an opposition movement, countering the president and his partisans' agenda. More fundamentally, we stand in defense of the greatest engine of material prosperity in human history, the fount of civilization, peace, and modernity: Capitalism.

Many regard it a dirty word and it is tarnished most of all by its supposed guardians. Wall Street giants fancy themselves capitalists even as they live off the taxpayer and thrive on the state's gifts of privilege, inflation, and barriers to entry. In the military-industrial complex they champion it by name as they produce devices of murder for the state. In the Republican Party and every conservative institution they talk it up while making such vast exceptions to the principle as to swallow it whole. When many think of capitalism, they think of the corporatist status quo, leading even some who favor economic freedom to abandon the term.

'Irrefutable' Proof of Obama forgery... Document details show typwriter had variable type way back in 1961? Posted July 17, 2011... When will Congress Investigate???

Wednesday, July 20, 2011

---

CERTIFIGATE
WND Exclusive
'Irrefutable' proof of Obama forgery
Document details show typewriter had variable type way back in 1961?

---

Posted: July 17, 2011
5:20 pm Eastern

By Jerome R. Corsi

---

WND

NEW YORK – Unless the typewriter used to type Barack Obama's purported Hawaiian "Certificate of Live Birth" in 1961 was magically capable of producing different size and shaped images with the exact same key, the document released by the White House April 27 is a forgery, says a professional typographer with 50 years experience.

"Steel-stamped letters do not expand to larger sizes and morph into different styles of type," retired New York City typographer Paul Irey told WND.

As WND previously reported, it would be impossible for the different letters that appear in the Obama birth certificate to have been typed by one typewriter, according to Irey.

Jerome Corsi's new book, "Where's the Birth Certificate?", is now available for immediate shipping, autographed by the author, only from the WND Superstore

"These are irrefutable proofs of forgery," he said.

His newest analysis suggests the document was assembled from images of letters or words taken from other documents.

"The forger who produced the Obama Hawaii long-form birth certificate may have thought that all typewriter typeface styles were alike," he said.

(Story continues below)

"To get his letters, the forger must have understood that he needed to copy the old typewriter styles," he continued. "So the forger probably scanned a bunch of old birth certificates, without realizing that the letters in the old files were from different typewriter styles. That's why the letters in the forged document do not match each other."

Irey used as a source document the Xerox copy of the Obama birth certificate the White House press staff handed to the press assembled in the White House pressroom on April 27, as seen in Exhibit 1:

From this source, Irey extracted individual typed letters and prepared a chart listing each typed letter that appeared in the document identified in the chart with a unique number identifier, as seen in Exhibit 2:

In Exhibit 3, Irey advanced his previously published analysis by comparing the two letters, #144 and #146, used to form the name "Barack" in Box 8, "Name of the Father," and explained they are not identical, such that the one is significantly bigger than the other.

"Why then is #144 significantly bigger than #146, if the same typewriter key struck both?" Irey asked.

Exhibit 3: 1st set typeface comparisons from the Obama long-form birth certificate released by the White House, April 27, 2011

Exhibit 4 extends the analysis to four additional letters from the Obama birth certificate, with the width of each letter measured and compared to make clear the size difference in the typeface.

As seen with the "s" in "Hussein" compared to the "s" in "Stanley," the typeface differs not only in size, but also in kind, with the serif differences leading to the conclusion that more than one typewriter was used to create the document.

Exhibit 4: 2nd set typeface comparisons from the Obama long-form birth certificate released by the White House, April 27, 2011

In Exhibit 5, Irey notes that the two different "t" letters in the word "Student" are particularly noteworthy.

"As a typographer I could see no reason for a different style of letter within the same word," Irey commented regarding the two different "t" letters used in typing the word "Student," a peculiarity seen in the last example presented in Exhibit 5.

Exhibit 5: 3rd set typeface comparisons from the Obama long-form birth certificate released by the White House, April 27, 2011

In Exhibit 6, Irey summarizes his argument: "If all the letters are from the same typewriter, why don't they match?"

Exhibit 6: Typeface analysis: Summary of argument Obama long-form birth certificate, White House Release, April 27, 2011.

"It's been some 30 years since we have used typewriters to produce documents," Irey noted. "Computers have replaced the typewriter and give us great advantages in document preparation. There is no need to understand the old typewriter – except when you need to forge a typewritten document."

Is Light Bulb Ban about to be Repealed?

House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Fred Upton (R-Mich.) says that he is "close" to an agreement with sponsors of legislation that would repeal the 2007 ban on the ordinary incandescent light bulb.

Upton told bloggers at The Heritage Foundation in Washington, D.C., Tuesday, that he is working with Reps. Joe Barton (R-Texas) and Michael Burgess (R-Texas) and expects that "soon, very soon" they will advance a bill that would undo regulations that effectively ban the ordinary incandescent light bulb by 2012 – regulations that Upton sponsored in 2007.

"We're very close to seeing an agreement emerge and happen, so stay tuned, I guess you have to say," Upton said. "(There are) a couple of different things we're looking at, so stay tuned in the next — probably couple of days, actually. Soon, just say soon.

Obama's Economists Admit Stimulas Has Cost $278,000.00 Per Job

Obama's Economists Admit 'Stimulus' Has Cost $278,000 per Job

July 4, 2011

When the Obama administration releases a report on the Friday before a long weekend, it's clearly not trying to draw attention to the report's contents. Sure enough, the "Seventh Quarterly Report" on the economic impact of the "stimulus," released on Friday, July 1, provides further evidence that President Obama's economic "stimulus" did very little, if anything, to stimulate the economy, and a whole lot to stimulate the debt.

The report was written by the White House's Council of Economic Advisors, a group of three economists who were all handpicked by Obama, and it chronicles the alleged success of the "stimulus" in adding or saving jobs. The council reports that, using "mainstream estimates of economic multipliers for the effects of fiscal stimulus" (which it describes as a "natural way to estimate the effects of" the legislation), the "stimulus" has added or saved just under 2.4 million jobs — whether private or public — at a cost (to date) of $666 billion. That's a cost to taxpayers of $278,000 per job.

Web Expert: Obama Certificate falls short in authenticity, Cites images sharing space, anomalous for typed pages

Web expert: Obama certificate falls short in authenticity Cites images sharing space, anomalous for typed pages

Editor's note: Jerome Corsi's "Where's the Birth Certificate? The Case That Barack Obama Is Not Eligible to Be President" is available today for immediate shipping, autographed by the author, exclusively by the WND Superstore. HONOLULU, Hawaii – A Web expert who has built and run Internet and networking companies says the image the White House released as Barack Obama's "Certificate of Live Birth" essentially fails the authenticity test and that the image was more "assembled" than copied from an original. That's the conclusion of Karl Denninger, whose resume includes work as CEO of MCSNet, a Chicago networking and Internet company; time with D&D Software/Macro Computer Solutions; work as a programming team leader for network software; and service in network engineering with ratings as a Unix System administrator. Denninger's work follows on the opinion from another analyst, Ivan Zatkovich of Tampa-based eComp Consultants, which consults on intellectual property for telecommunications, Web publishing and e-commerce. He also has provided services for corporations such as McGraw-Hill, Houghton-Mifflin, Citicorp and Amazon.com. Zatkovich, who has 28 years experience in computer science and document management and for more than 10 years has been an expert witness in federal court in both criminal and civil litigation, told WND the White House image "has specific content extracted from that base layer and enhanced." Click here to get your copy of "Where's the Birth Certificate? The Case That Barack Obama Is Not Eligible to Be President". Zatkovich said, "This was done through an explicit operation to edit and/or enhance the printing in the document. There is no ambiguity here. There was an explicit action by a person to modify the document. ... Mostly like to enhance the legibility, but still an explicit action nonetheless." He explained that his analysis was similar to that routinely done on evidentiary documents for cell phones and computers in cases involving child porn, fraud and murder cases. "The content clearly indicates that the document was knowingly and explicitly edited and modified before it was placed on the web," he said. Now Denninger has posted a series of reports online, including on YouTube, where he explains his concerns, which focus around the lettering as it appears on the document that reportedly is a photocopy on green "safety paper" of the original record in Hawaii. He explains that the type on the birth document show evidence of "kerning," the squeezing of letters into a line so that they intrude into adjacent letter spaces. Kerning is routine, since the advent of word processors and computers, but impossible with a typewriter. Denninger explains that in the image above, of the name of the hospital, the "a" and the "p" share vertical space on the line. "This process, of course, requires that you know what the next letter is. With a computer this is pretty easy, since the computer can retroactively go back and adjust, and it also can typeset the current letter with the knowledge of what the previous one was," he reported. "A typewriter, on the other hand, is a mechanical device. It does not know what the next letter is that you will type, nor does it know what the last letter was that you typed. It thus has a typeface that always leaves physical space between the boundary of each character." To those who argue that some sort of physical condition – such as a malfunctioning typewriter carriage – could have caused what appears to be kerning, he says the document doesn't support that explanation. Further, he says, another scan of the document, done by the Associated Press, produced an image with critical differences from what document the White House released. For example, he said the White House image's background isn't consistent. "Somebody took two images, the safety paper image as a background, and laid this other document on top of it. This is not a scan, this is assembled from two, or more than two documents, that were put together by computerized means," he said. His full explanation is on video: "To refute this point you must come up with a typewriter that contains a flux capacitor and thus is capable of accurately predicting the future," he said. "This document has been assembled by somebody on a computer." He contends "there's only one way we're going to get the truth – a forensic document examiner is going to have to go look at the certificate and authenticate it. The real one – not a printout." Denninger, who says he voted for Obama, also talked about the typewriter characters' alignment. The B from Barack and the K from Kapiolani line up vertically, but the line then goes through the middle of the M in Male, he said. He said the only explanation would be that someone typed "Male" after filling out the rest of the document, and then took the paper out and reinserted it. That, he concluded, is illogical. "Draw your own conclusions, but what I see here is a document that was not put into a typewriter and typed in one operation. Has this proved somebody tampered with it? Not necessarily. But it's another piece of the puzzle." He also noted the scanned document from the White House has no "chromatic artifacts," as one would expect in a color scan. Chromatic artifacts, however, show up in the AP scan of the same document, and their absence in the White House release document shows "is not an unaltered color scan." He also wondered why the typist had not used tab stops, as a clerk typing many forms probably would. "We're talking about probabilities," he told WND. "When you look at a handful of layers, that's not proof … but it's more evidence." The White House had trumpeted the release of the document, calling it "proof positive" Obama was born in Hawaii, as if that would answer all of the questions about his presidential eligibility. But who contend the country's founders understood a "natural born Citizen" to be a person born of two American parents say the document actually proves Obama's ineligibility. Barack Obama Sr., who is listed as the father, was not a U.S. citizen. The president himself even seemed to acknowledge the relevance of parental citizenship when he co-sponsored a resolution to address Sen. John McCain's presidential eligibility that implied a "natural born Citizen" must be born to "American citizen" parents. Hawaii officials say they have Obama's original birth certificate and made copies for the president. One of the copies then was scanned and posted on the White House website.

Rove: Obama Will Likely Lose in 2012.. by Henry J. Reske (NewsMax) Thursday June 23, 2011

Newsmax

Rove: Obama Will Likely Lose in 2012

Thursday, June 23, 2011 09:40 AM

By: Henry J. Reske
President Barack Obama will likely be defeated in 2012 because of a weak economy, lost support from key constituents, unpopular policies and bad strategic decisions, Karl Rove, former senior adviser and deputy chief of staff to President George W. Bush, argues in an Op-Ed in The Wall Street Journal.

Rove notes that unemployment now stands at 9.1 percent with many of the 14 million Americans out of work for more than six months. A recent Bloomberg poll showed Americans believe they are worse off than when Mr. Obama took office by a 44% to 34% margin and the last president reelected with unemployment over 7.2 percent was FDR in 1936.

Obama's relationship with his base is also troubled. Jewish voters are upset with his policy toward Israel, and "left-wing bloggers at last week's NetRoots conference were angry over Mr. Obama's failure to deliver a leftist utopia."

His job approval rating is down and his support amongst younger voters has dropped 22 percent and among Latinos 20 percent. "Even African-American voters are less excited about Mr. Obama than they were—and than he needs them to be. For example, if their share of the turnout drops just one point in North Carolina, Mr. Obama's 2008 winning margin there is wiped out two and a half times over," Rove wrote.

Obama's policies are also a drag, Rove wrote, noting that "his health-care reform still holds its unique place as the only major piece of social legislation that became less popular after it was passed. According to yesterday's Pollster.com average of recent surveys, 38% approve of ObamaCare, while its survey average when the bill was passed in March 2010 showed that 41% approved."

Obama is also making a strategic blunder of actively attacking "potential GOP opponents and (slandering) Republican proposals with abandon. This is not what the public is looking for from the former apostle of hope and change."

"In politics, 17 months can constitute several geological ages. Political fortunes can wax and wane. And weak incumbents can defeat even weaker challengers," Rove concluded.

"At the same time, objective circumstances like an anemic economy and bad decisions not only matter; they become very nearly dispositive. Mr. Obama is now at the mercy of policies and events he has set in motion. He can't escape accountability, especially on the economy. He's not done yet, but it will be tough to recover."








© Newsmax. All rights reserved.

Obama slips DREAM ACT AMNESTY past Congress (World Net Daily News) By Drew Zahn June 25, 2011

Friday, June 24, 2011

---

INVASION USA
WND
Obama slips DREAM Act amnesty past Congress
Columnist charges, 'This is outright lawlessness on part of the administration'

---

Posted: June 25, 2011
1:00 am Eastern

By Drew Zahn

---

WND

A new enforcement memo handed down by the director of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement last week has some accusing the White House of running around Congress to implement the DREAM Act – and consequent amnesty for some illegal immigrants – by executive fiat.

The new memo, penned by ICE Director John Morton, directs ICE agents, attorneys and directors to exercise "prosecutorial discretion" – meaning less likelihood of deportation – for illegal aliens who have been students in the U.S., who have been in the country since childhood or who have served in the American military.

Critics have pointed out the new leniency standards parallel the provisions of the Development, Relief and Education for Alien Minors Act, or DREAM Act, which could not pass the Senate, despite several votes over the past decade, including three failed attempts at passage last year.

"This is outright lawlessness on the part of the administration," argued syndicated columnist Charles Krauthammer on a discussion panel with Fox News' anchor Chris Wallace. "Whatever the politics of this, we do have a Constitution. And under it, the Legislature, the Congress enacts the laws and the executive executes them. It doesn't make them up.

"The DREAM Act was rejected by Congress," Krauthammer continued. "It is now being enacted by the executive, despite the express will of the Congress. That is lawless. It may not be an explicit executive order; it's an implicit one."

(Story continues below)

Other guests on Wallace's program admitted that President Obama has been under pressure from Hispanic lobbyists to do what Krauthammer is accusing: an end run around Congress.

"Immigration-rights activists have been pressing the president to do exactly this, because they couldn't get the DREAM Act enacted," commented Nina Easton of Fortune Magazine. "They have been saying, 'Let's do it administratively.' He has done the same thing on labor issues, union issues, by the way."

Mara Liasson of National Public Radio added, "That's exactly what the president has promised to do. Latino activists were asking him to issue an executive order to make the DREAM Act a law. That would truly be an end run around Congress. And he said he doesn't have the power to do that.

"What he does have is prosecutorial discretion," Liasson continued. "That's existed long before he came in office. And what ICE did today was it said, 'Here are all the factors that you can take into consideration.'"

Specifically, the memo argues, "Because the agency is confronted with more violations than its resources can address, the agency must regularly exercise prosecutorial discretion."

Therefore, it states, priority in prosecution should be given to "felons," "gang members" and "repeat offenders."

But other determinants are listed "positive factors [that] should prompt particular care and consideration," namely if the illegal immigrant is a veteran of the U.S. armed forces, present in the U.S. since childhood, pregnant, a victim of violent crime or suffering from serious health conditions.

In addition, the memo states, "When weighing whether an exercise of prosecutorial discretion may be warranted for a given alien, ICE officers, agents and attorneys should consider all relevant factors, including, but not limited to:

• The person's length of presence in the United States;
  
• The circumstances of the person's arrival in the United States and the manner of his or her entry, particularly if the alien came to the United States as a young child;
  
• The person's pursuit of education in the United States, with particular consideration given to those who have graduated from a U.S. high school or have successfully pursued or are pursuing a college or advanced degrees at a legitimate institution of higher education in the United States."

The DREAM Act would similarly grant children in the country illegally the opportunity to become U.S. citizens if they attend college or enlist in the military.

Though the Nancy Pelosi-led U.S. House of Representatives passed the DREAM Act during the "lame duck" session after last year's election, the U.S. Senate has repeatedly failed to clear the 60-vote threshold necessary to bring it up for vote over Republican filibusters.

Obama's Budget Plan: Class-Warfare Tax Policy and Bureaucrat-Controlled Health Care.... by Dan Mitchell..

Obama's Budget Plan: Class-Warfare Tax Policy and Bureaucrat-Controlled Health Care

by Dan Mitchell

President Obama didn't offer a budget plan yesterday. The White House hasn't released anything beyond a set of talking points.

But that's not terribly surprising since his speech was really the opening salvo of his 2012 reelection fight. And it's clear that a central theme of his campaign will be class warfare.

But if we translate his campaign-style demagoguery into the overall budget framework, we get something like this fiscal continuum. Obama, for all intents and purposes, has taken the moderately left-wing proposal crafted by his Fiscal Commission and moved it significantly in the wrong direction by adding class-warfare tax policy. As such, he is close to the left end of the line, which represents "Statism."

The Ryan plan, by contrast, is the moderately right-wing mirror image of the Fiscal Commission. But rather than cementing in place bigger government, as proposed by Simpson and Bowles, Ryan's budget slowly shrinks the fiscal burden of government. As such, it is on the "Liberty" side of the continuum.

America's Founding Fathers had the right idea, of course, They envisioned a very limited central government, and for much of our nation's history, the federal budget consumed about 3 percent of GDP. Unfortunately, the Hoover-Roosevelt policies began the process of moving America in the wrong direction, and federal spending now consumes nearly one-fourth of America's economic output.

But enough history.

Let's revisit Obama's speech and the accompanying talking points. In addition to the class warfare (more on that below), we also see an explicit call to reduce the growth of Medicare spending by "strengthening the Independent Payment Advisory Board."

In other words, Obama wants to use his control of the purse strings to give bureaucrats more ability to decide what kind of care seniors can receive. It's politically incorrect to call this type of entity a "death panel," so I'll simply contrast Obama's top-down bureaucratic approach with the Ryan plan, which is based on giving vouchers to future seniors so they can pick the health plans that best fit their needs (people over 55 would be stuck with the current system). And since this is very similar to the system used to provide health care for Members of Congress and their staff, you know it must work reasonably well.

Let's briefly return to the tax side of the fiscal equation. I'll have more to say about this in a separate post giving a behind-the-scenes look at what Democrats really hope to achieve in the area of tax policy, but I want to offer a basic explanation of why the soak-the-rich approach is doomed to fail. There are five reasons in this video to reject class warfare, including a very important warning that high tax rates on the rich almost always are a tactical move to facilitate higher taxes for the rest of us.