The question that you should have asked was How much more evidence do sane people need?
Those of us with a brain have taken the state of Hawaii's word for it. Did you happen to notice that when your precious birther nonsense was raised in the media this fall that anyone who took your side was laughed at?
Get used to it
And as far as Obama being born in Kenya, they were talking about this guy.
Thanks for the poll results. That proves what I've been saying all along. About half of this country are total morons who want one of their own running things. No thanks, we already had 8 years of that and look what it got us
WASHINGTON, September 4, - The Republican Party appears to be losing support among a key group of voters who had hitherto stood firmly with the Republicans even as their poll numbers among other groups fell dramatically.
A new Gallup poll shows that for the first time, that the Republican approval
rating has fallen below 50% among total fucking morons, and now
stands at 22% with the rest of us. This represents a dramatic drop compared to a poll
taken just a few years ago, when 62% of total fucking morons expressed
support for the Republican Party and President Bush and his policies.
I guess all it takes is a near economic depression to get through that thick creamy nuagat that they have where the rest of us have a brain. One teabagging simpleton summed up
That group’s opinion with this statement “I miss George Bush. He was a great decider. Look at all the good things that he did. He doubled our national debt in 8 years and still was able to give the richest of us all huge tax cuts. I’d like to see Obama try to do that and get away with it !!!
Not all Republican lawmakers are concerned about the poll. Sen.
Lamar Alexander (R-TN), for one, does not find it a cause for
anxiety. While he agrees that his party should not take total fucking
morons for granted, they "really don't have anywhere else to go.
They're never going to be able to understand someone like President Obama,
Al Gore, or anybody intelligent and articulate who wants to talk
about substantive issues. Just try having a conversation with one of
them about global warming or Obama’s birth cert. They'll say, 'Oh, but Rush says volcanoes consume more ozone than humans do. I mean, they're morons! Total
fucking morons!" “These are the same people who still think that Adam and Eve
rode dinosaurs to church.
"They've got nowhere else to go," Alexander reaffirms with a smile,
"and they always vote."
The current poll, conducted by phone with 1,409 total fucking morons
between August 4 and August 8, reveals that only 34% of those polled
believe the Republicans are doing a good job , while 27% believe they are doing a poor job and 39% don't understand the question.
Faltering approval ratings for the Republican Agenda among a group once thought to be a reliable source of loyal support gives Republicans one
more reason to be nervous about the next round of elections.
"If we can't depend on the support of total fucking morons," says former Sen.
Rick Santorum (R-PA), "then we've got a big problem. They're a key
factor in our electoral strategy, and an important part of today's
Republican coalition."
"We've taken the total fucking moron vote for granted," says Rep. Tom
Feeney (R-FL), "and now we're paying for it. We've let the Democrats
control the debate lately, and they've dragged discourse back into
the realm of actual real issues. So your average total fucking
moron turns on his TV and sees his Republican Congressman arguing
about health care or the complexities or repairing the economy that
Bush left on the brink of disaster and he tunes out. He wants to hear comforting,
pandering, flattering bromides and he doesn't want to hear a logical
argument more complex than what you'd find on a bumper sticker."
For Feeney, the poll is a dire warning that Republicans can ignore
only at their peril. "This should send a signal that we have to
regain control of the debate if we want the support of our key
constituencies in the coming election and beyond. We need to bring
public discourse back into the realm of stupidity and vacuity. We
should be talking about homosexual illegal immigrants burning flags.
We should be talking about the power of pride. We should be talking
about freedom fries. These are the issues that resonate with total
fucking morons."
But some total fucking morons say it's too late. Bill Snarpel of Enid,
Oklahoma is a total fucking moron who voted for Bush in both 2000 and
2004. But he says he didn’t vote for Bush in 2008. He voted for that nice
lady from Alaska. He loved the way she said you betcha. That woulda
sounded so cool in the White House.
He added. "I don't like it when they try our ports to the Arabs. If
the Arabs own the ports then that means they'll let all the Arabs in
and then we'll all be riding camels and wearing towels on our heads. I
don't want my children singing the Star Spangled Banner in Muslim."
Total fucking moron Kurt Meyer of Turlock, California also says his
once solid support for Republicans has collapsed. "Bush invaded Iraq and all
those soldiers died, and for what? We destroyed all their WMDs, but
now their new president is making fun of us and saying he's going to
build nuclear bombs and that we can't stop him. Well, nuclear bombs
are even worse than WMDs, so what did we accomplish?"
Laura McDonald, a total fucking moron from Chandler, Arizona, says
she is disappointed that the party hasn't been a more forceful
advocate of Christian values. "This country was founded on Christian
values," she says, "but you'd never know it looking around and seeing
all the Mexicans running around.
Not all total fucking morons have turned their backs on the Republican Party.
Jeb Larkin of Topeka, Kansas says he still fully supports the Republican Party
and that he will vote for whatever joke of a candidate steps forward in 2012. He summed up his opinions with this statement “Obama is not a citizen. He was born on some island called Hawaii that is trying to give us all worse health care than the insurance
companies who deny us coverage now when we get sick”. “It’s just not American or decent to give people who are sick health care” unless they can pay for it”.
“And why do we have a Muslim in the White House? We know he’s a Muslim because of that funny name. We know that he spent over 20 years at Reverend Wright’s Christian church as deep cover. The same goes for that Reverend Wright. He spent 2 years in the Marines and another 2 years in the Navy to confuse us. What makes him think that he has the right to speak his mind in America? That right is only for whatever script approved veterans that Fox News says is ok.
Then he added, I have a puppy. His tail sticks straight up and you can see his butthole."
2. Deregulated the financial system to make it easier for their friends to make more money. It led to our banks and Wall St firms turning themselves into casinos.
3. Lied us into a war for oil that caused oil prices to quadruple, leading to uncountable job losses.
4. Gave huge tax breaks to the companies sending our jobs overseas.
5. Promoted a culture of corruption by appointing industry hacks to oversee and regulate the industries that they worked for.
6. Appointed incompetent friends into positions of power based on loyalty or the fact that they were born again, the same as our former idiot leader.
You're doing a heck of a job Brownie and that clueless SEC guy who should've been watching the deals that brought down our economy come to mind for starters.
Kenyan-born US Senate hopeful, Barrack 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.
And we are still giving huge tax breaks to the companies doing it. The only people in DC speaking out against this are the President and some of the Democrats.
And when they speak out about fixing this, they are shouted down by teabaggers egged on by Fox News.
I wonder why? Do they like working at Wal-Mart for $10/hour with no health benefits?
Bush Supports New Tax Breaks for Companies that Ship Jobs Overseas
March 31—President George W. Bush continues to support billions in new tax breaks for U.S. corporations’ overseas operations. Last year, Bush proposed new tax breaks to export jobs in his budget. Now he’s supporting foreign tax breaks in legislation before Congress. As Bush lobbies for the new tax breaks, a new survey of 182 companies shows nearly 86 percent of U.S. firms that are exporting U.S. jobs plan to outsource more jobs in the near future, according to a March 26 report by Reuters on a poll by the management consulting firm Diamondcluster International.
Bush is supporting the $37 billion in tax breaks for U.S. firms’ offshore operations as part of Senate legislation S. 1637 that would also replace a domestic tax break for exporters found to be illegal by the World Trade Organization with a new domestic tax benefit for manufacturing. While the manufacturing tax benefit standing alone would create an incentive to keep and create jobs in the United States, the new foreign tax breaks in S. 1637 will encourage companies to export more jobs. Sen. Fritz Hollings (D-S.C.) will offer an amendment to strip out the $37 billion in new foreign tax breaks.
Faulty Tax Policies Backed by Bush Encourage Corporations to Export U.S. Jobs
The Diamondcluster survey also found that more than 80 percent of the respondents were concerned that political pressure or legislation could slow their outsourcing efforts. The same day the survey was released, Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry unveiled a jobs and economy proposal that calls for the elimination of U.S. tax breaks that encourage companies to move jobs offshore.
Faulty trade and tax policies supported by the Bush administration make it profitable to send U.S. jobs abroad and have encouraged many employers to ship jobs overseas. Nearly 3 million jobs have disappeared since Bush took office, including some 2.8 million manufacturing jobs.
14 Million White-Collar Jobs Could Be Exported Overseas in the Years Ahead
In addition, as many as 14 million white-collar jobs could be lost to offshore outsourcing in the years ahead, according to a 2003 study by the University of California at Berkeley. In mid-March, Secretary of State Colin Powell traveled to India, where many U.S. white-collar jobs have migrated, to reassure Indian leaders the Bush administration will not try to halt outsourcing of high-technology jobs to that country, according to The New York Times.
In a recent interview with the The Cincinnati Enquirer, Bush Treasury Secretary John Snow praised the exporting of U.S. jobs as beneficial for the U.S. economy and gave a slap in the face to U.S. workers: “You can outsource a lot of activities and get them done just as well at a lower cost,” he said.
Why any working man making less than a few hundred thousand a year would vote for a Republican is beyond me. The party of union busting and tax cuts for the rich protects the profits of the ruling class and what trickles down to you is brown and it smells bad.
How can the rest of you not wake up and smell the shitstorm? PT Barnum was right, there is a sucker born every minute and you can fool some of the people all of the time.
Enjoy your job or unemployment check while it lasts.
But that won't stop us from laughing at you or keep me from fucking with you every time you post. We elected the dumbest most corrupt President in the history of this country based on lies like this. Most of us don't want another moron in the White House. People like you are more dangerous than Bin Laden.
FactCheck.org, whose staff concluded in an August 21, 2008, post that it "meets all of the requirements from the State Department for proving U.S. citizenship." The Hawaii Department of Health also repeatedly confirmed that the birth certificate on record with the state is valid and proves that he was born in the state of Hawaii.
The Hawaii Governor and Department of Health confirmed that the original valid birth certificate is on record with the state is in the vault
Obama hasn't fought for a single minute on a single birth certificate case. His lawyers haven't paid a penny on it anywhere. A right wing website simply invented a dollar figure that he paid for legal fees. Then as other right-wingers cited it, they kept upping the number. Soon zero became millions, and every drop of it was completely unsourced
I have heard time and time again that we will never be happy, however, that is far from the truth. We will be happy once Soetoro/Obama proves his legal name, proves his citizenship status and proves his constitutional eligibility to hold the office of President of the United States, or steps down due to his ineligibility. We as people are held accountable for the things we do, right or wrong. It is time, our Government is also held accountable. It is time our Government ensures our our laws and our Constitution are enforced, in addition to taking steps to correct the wrongs.
I wonder what kind of doctors we will be in store for us when after spending
hundreds of thousands of dollars and so much work they can look forward
to making $35 a visit - less than the Maytag repair man
But, no one in any kind of power has the nerve to even bring this to a discussion.
If it were actually to be investigated, we would have a serious Constituional crisis.
That's why even Fox News won't go there.
These failed business entities own the presidency own the fedral government and are bankrupting average Americans, killing America, and some of us not too smart types are worried that the new guy is too different from the rest of us, might be a Muslamb/socialist, what next pole smoker? Get a clue..
In addition, we are in debt to a communist not socialist country [China] to the tune of 5 to 7 trillion dollars that Bush/Cheney and the boys borrowed [with interest] to fight the war for oil against the wrong country. Uncle Saddam hated the AlQuida and talliban more then he feared Iran.
China now has America by the short hairs thanks to Bush and the fine Americans who have wet dreams when they think about the murder of todays ''enemy''.
The majority of Americans, black white republican democrat , male female voted for the current president.
Do the nitwits and haters really think that the majority of Americans hates America?
If the ''magic negro'' has luck and integrity and stops listening to the likes of Larry Summers, Rahm Emanuel, Laurence Meyers, Paul Ruben and the other entrenched criminals in government, we may all have a chance to see happy days [pre-Bush] days again.
If not, get a mexican or canadian passport, suckers, the negro being a kenyan hywyan will be the least of your troubles..
They did the research in response to a lawsuit by Philip J. Berg filed claiming that Obama is a non-citizen of the U.S. and thus ineligible to run for
president.
WND investigated last August and said that Berg "relied on discredited claims,"
So why are they promoting this joke of a news story? Because they have turned it into a profit center. When a few hundred thousand total morons bought into this horseshit, the light bulb went on and they figured out how much money they could fleece from these simpletons.
They take money from these retards telling them that it is going to go for billboards and then tell them that the billboard companies won’t take their ads. It’s brilliant.
And the dipshit on this forum keeps posting their links after he’s seen these facts at least 50 times. He must be either the dumbest motherfucker on the planet or he works for WND.
With each article WND publishes on Obama's birth certificate that fails to acknowledge that August article declaring the certificate "authentic," it perpetrates a journalistic fraud on its readers. Certainly WND's employees are not so stupid as to be unaware the article exists; thus, the only logical conclusion is that WND is deliberately ignoring, which constitutes the basis for this fraud
If WND no longer stands by the article, it should say so. If it does stand by the article, it should stop promoting the fiction that Obama is not a U.S. citizen.
Those are the only two choices available to an ethical journalist. But WND's journalists have proven they have no interest in behaving in an ethical manner.
Until Joseph Farah and WND come clean and tell the truth, they cannot be trusted as a credible news source. If it can't reconcile its own reporting, why trust anything else it publishes?
Another scam ran by WND was A Dec. 1 article urging readers to FedEx a letter (through WND, of course) urging the Supreme Court to "review a case Friday challenging the eligibility of Barack Obama under Article 2, Section 1 of the Constitution, which stipulates the position can only be filled by 'a natural born citizen'" fails to reference the August WND article calling Obama's birth certificate "authentic." (WND claims it sent "6,682 FedEx packages of nine letters each" to the Supreme Court. WND charged each letter-writer $9.95 for the privilege. Somehow we suspect FedEx charged WND a lot less than $89.45 each to overnight those envelopes to Washington -- meaning that WND has turned its hatred of Obama into a profit center.)
And some of you assholes would vote for them again and believe the bs that Obama drove up the debt. 85% of our national debt came from Bush, Bush and Reagan and their tax cuts for the rich and out of control defense spending. We had less than one Trillion in debt when Reagan took over and we had 12 Trillion in debt when Bush left. If it wasn't for the continuing wars for oil, tax cuts for the rich, and the money they are spending putting band aids on our economy to try to fix the mess that Bush left us with, we wouldn't be spending that much this year. Clinton raised the top tax rates 3 whole % and balanced the budget. Surpluses were forecast for much of this decade when he left. We all know what happened to that.
Yeah, it was Dumbo "the Decider" and yes, those of us with a brain are still blaming him --because it was his fault.
PT Barnum was right. There is one born every minute. Anyone who would want to put those crooks back in office needs a glassectomy.
Court time is one of the few ways a Police Officer can make Overtime so basically they use the system to steal from us. And from what I have heard from other traffic attorney’s and local TV investigative reports this is rampant. But very hard to prove !!!
I personally heard another officer from the same 13th District complain of the “Midnight Gang” but says nothing can be done if the District or Night Commander or Sergeant won’t do anything.
Two of the Midnight Gang Officers’ Considine & Kriv (both from District 13) have CONSISTENTLY over each of the last four (4) years been in the top ten for Chicago Police writing DUI tickets. Allegedly, Officer Considine has been investigated for “similar” arrest report and has been heard to speak of his overtime pay to finish his house. Supposedly, when referencing his arrest reports allegedly stated they are “standard” and his reports have been looked into for this reason.
There is no way this takes place without the night commander’ knowledge and other officer’s complacency, as a breathalyzer operator Officer Aguirre allegedly lied in court just after talking with Officer Considine.
The Night supervisor Sergeant Courtney must know of this and the almost certain misinformation provided by other officers in court. Officer Aguirre is thought to have been instructed as to what to say in court. There is an incident when Officer Aguirre could not remember a conversation between an ‘offender”, Night Sgt Courtney and Officer Ortiz. Let’s put them all on the stand!!!
A local TV investigative reporter stated Officer Kriv has been “looked” into for taking favors from particular offenders. Officer Aguirre consistently abides by the instructions of his senior patrolmen and watch Commander Sgt. Courtney does nothing to stop the injustice…
America started out not as a conservative country, but as a bunch of Radical Liberals with guns and determined not to serve the corporate interests of the crown King George].
Fact: Commercial foreclosures are ramping up to the same rates as residential -- and many of these companies are listed on the NYSE -- which will cause stocks to tumble
What else could be Wrong with Roland Burris. Check out the video (U.S.)
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Date: 2009-12-22, 5:40PM CST
Reply to: comm-52vtc-1521798164@craigslist.org [Errors when replying to ads?]
Please leave a comment on my blog I update it hourly.
I have the latest Roland Burris video singing on the Senate floor , yea you read that right. Does this man have know shame at all?
I have many topics and videos everything is updated hourly and I respond back to all comments. Please leave your comments at http://alternateviewsnews.blogspot.com/
A similar suit (Barnett v. Obama) recently came before U.S. District Court Judge David O. Carter. Contrary to what is claimed in the example block above, Judge Carter has not "refused to hear Obama's request for dismissal" of the suit, nor will he be ordering "Obama to release his birth certificate in a timely manner." The referenced case has already been dismissed by Judge Carter, who concluded his 29 October 2009 order granting the defendants' Motion to Dismiss with the following statement:
Plaintiffs have encouraged the Court to ignore mandates of the Constitution; to disregard the limits on its power put in place by the Constitution; and to effectively overthrow a sitting president who was popularly elected by "We the People" — over sixty-nine million of the people. Plaintiffs have attacked the judiciary, including every prior court that has dismissed their claim, as unpatriotic and even treasonous for refusing to grant their requests and for adhering to the terms of the Constitution which set forth its jurisdiction. Respecting the constitutional role and jurisdiction of this Court is not unpatriotic. Quite the contrary, this Court considers commitment to that constitutional role to be the ultimate reflection of patriotism.
Coming up shortly folks...January 26, 2010, ---In Federal Superior Court Judge David Carter (retired Marine) in southern California will review & rule on HIS expedited case of obama's eligibility for the Presidency regarding obama's lack of proof of Natural Born Citizenship. We FINALLY have a Federal Judge with the guts! obama will HAVE to produce PROOF of his citizenship status! (among OTHER things)
"The Dems are in charge and you can't stand it." - You are right. And neither can the Dems. Having secured a majority in the House, and 60 seats in the Senate the health bill could have been passed in its original form. Did it? Despite all the white house oral flatulence regarding Repubs not being on board - it didn't need the GOP to pass the bill. Why did Reid have to insert hundreds upon hundreds of millions of dollars in earmarks just to get his party members to vote for it? Use what's left of your brain to ponder as to why this occurred.
"You will do anything and everything to stand in the way of progress." - $20 bet that your degree is in chilhood education or a social science like sociology. Remember critical thinking? Was it not covered in Womyn's studies? When you say things like "stand in the way of progress" - I guess the biggest point of contention would be the definition of progress. Does your definition of progress not allow for divergence of thought?
I have many topics and videos everything is updated hourly and I respond back to all comments. Please leave your comments at http://alternateviewsnews.blogspot.com/
We have banished GOD from our Schools and Homes ,Very few of GOD;S laws are being followed,Many Claim there is no GOD alltogether,I think He got the Idea of AMERICA no longer Interested in Him.
Whenever there is a Country with No GOD as ruler and Champion there are Consequences severe Consequences examples SOVIET UNION,GERMANY WW2,NORTH KOREA,AFRICA etc.
GOD got the message and hes left us alonre with our Free will and because of our FREE WILL THERE IS BARRACK HUSSEIN OBAMA and OBAM ACARE and 15 % Unemployment and OPEN KILLING IN THE STREETS,PLUNDERING,RAPING,Television with nothing but Sex and Violance anytime you watch,False Profits on TV everywhere.
Thank God that both presidents have done this – both Bush and Obama. President Obama has vowed to send additional troops to Afghanistan in order to address the Talibastard’s escalation of the war and thank God Obama just recently authorized attacks against the terrorists in Yemen!
Terrorists are not human, are not animals, and certainly are not creations of God – they must be eradicated if we have any hope at world peace! This is the clearest of “no brainers”!!!
And thank God Bush had the moral fortitude to follow through on his 9/11 promise that we will make no distinctions between terrorists and nations that harbor them!
Furthermore, we ALL should thank God that no one was tortured and that there were not millions of innocent casualties resulting from the vanquishing of global evil in the Global War on Terror (GWOT)!!!
Fortunately, the pernicious, fallacious lies about millions of dead innocent civilians as well as the claim of oil as the impetus were all completely false and unfounded!
Having said all of this, it is unclear as to why Liberals believe the USA is such a horrible country – why do they ALL believe all of these pernicious lies about the USA??? Why do they ALL adhere to the dubious, abhorrent idiotology that the USA is a force for evil when clearly the facts prove that the USA is the most virtuous, altruistic, magnanimous nation on planet Earth???
To all Liberals, the far-left, all anti-virtue, all anti-altruism, all anti-philanthropic, and all anti-American ideologues – why are you still here??? If you believe all of the anti-American lies fomented by the US media, foreign media, Al Jazeera, and all of their ilk; why do you still live here in the greatest country on Eath???
Unless you are actually that stupid, how else would you get enamored of complete category 5 morons like Bush and Palin and believe any hoax on a wingnut blog or in a propaganda email, no matter how ridiculous? I know that some of you wingnuts have degrees or even advanced degrees, but the majority of you have to have the iq of Forrest Gump to believe the shit that you do.
Case in point. A wingnut friend of mine emailed me some bs about Obama is about to turn us all into Soylent Green
What Is WorldNet Daily Hiding? WorldNetDaily won't subject itself to the transparency it demands from Barack Obama regarding his birth certificate.
As the saying goes: When you have nothing to hide, you hide nothing. By that standard, WorldNetDaily is clearly hiding something.
WND's desperate campaign to demand that Barack Obama prove he's a "natural born citizen" -- even though he already has -- is one long trail of falsehoods presented as facts, dishonesty about its agenda, and a lack of transparency about its own actions.
ConWebWatch has documented 23 falsehoods WND has published -- sometimes repeatedly -- about Obama, some of which involve claims surrounding the birth certificate. Not only has WND yet to correct any of those falsehoods, it invents new ones.
As ConWebWatch has already detailed, to make the claims it makes now, WND must contradict its own original reporting on the subject, which asserted that the birth certificate released by the Obama campaign in mid-2008 is "authentic" and that a lawsuit filed by Philip Berg on the matter in part "relies on discredited claims." WND has never retracted this article, yet WND editor Joseph Farah has falsely claimed that WND never made the assertions it contains.
So what we have is a group of Liars fleecing some really gullible morons. The guy posting those asinine WND links has seen this evidence at least 50 times but yet he continues posting. Either he works for WND or he is by far the dumbest motherfucker
on the internet.
But that's not the only thing WND is curiously afraid to tell its readers about. Among the others:
Who's donating to WND's billboard campaign? The short answer—complete and total Morons with a capitol M.
In May, WND began soliciting donations for a billboard campaign containing the statement, "Where's the Birth Certificate?" A May 20 WND article stated that Farah was calling it "the truth and transparency campaign" -- a laughable statement given WND's reluctance to engage in either. ConWebWatch asked WND if it would honor the "spirit of disclosure" it was demanding from Obama by disclosing the donors to the billboard campaign. Farah responded (boldface his):
Our demand on Obama has nothing to do with a "spirit of disclosure," though Obama has pledged to run the most open and transparent administration in American history. The Constitution requires a president to be a natural born citizen. That same Constitution also provides that ordinary American citizens the right to spend their money any way they want without fear of harassment from government officials.
If you need any more civics lesson, please feel free to call on me.
Farah did not explain why the birth certificate released by the Obama campaign -- which his own reporters have determined to be "authentic" -- fails as sufficient proof of being a "natural born citizen" when even the right-wing FrontPageMag has pointed out that it is "the same document that anyone born in Hawaii shows when applying for a drivers license, social security card, passport, or security clearance. It was also accepted as valid by the election officials of the 50 states."
Farah also fails to explain what credibility such a secretive organization has in demanding transparency of another. But such opaqueness has long been a hallmark of WND; in 2006, WND failed to respond to a request by ConWebWatch to disclose the donors to its legal defense fund and an accounting of how that money was spent. This was at a time that WND was fighting a libel lawsuit filed against it by Tennessee businessman Clark Jones -- a lawsuit it settled two years later by admitting that it published false claims about Jones. WND has never explained why it fought Jones' lawsuit for seven years and settled only when the case was set to go to trial, why it made no effort to verify the claims it made about Jones (or any other claim in the multi-part series attacking Al Gore) before publication, or whether it has made an effort to fact-check other claims in that series given the tainted nature of those stories.
Why won't WND address the repeated debunkings of its birth certificate-related claims?
The aforementioned FrontPageMag article, an April 1 piece by Andrew Walden, unambiguously asserted: "Barack Obama was born in Hawai'i, August 4, 1961 at Kapiolani Medical Center in Honolulu. Obamas birth certificate posted online is exactly the same birth certificate everybody in Hawaii gets from the State Department of Health. It is not forged." Walden went on to state:
Walden even called out WorldNetDaily for getting facts wrong:
A World Net Daily story claiming Hawai'is Republican Governor Linda Lingle sealed the birth certificate is totally false. The governors office has asked for a retraction.
Walden blows his credibility somewhat, however, by going on to claim that right-wing obsession over the birth certificate is exactly what Obama wants:
By refusing media requests for a look at the actual paper birth certificate, Obamas campaign gave sly backhanded assistance to the forgery hype. The internet release of the birth certificate via hyper-partisan website Daily Kos on June 12 before posting it on a campaign website was likely calculated to fuel the frenzy. This is Obamas Gramscian strategy designed to redirect the opposition down a blind alley.
[...]
Obama benefits from creating an opposition which seems to be standing by the side of the road impotently pointing to a piece of paper as if it could stop 63 million voters from anointing their chosen one. Birth certificate lawsuit plaintiff Phil Berg is a Democrat and whether he understands it or not, he has done great work on behalf of his party.
It is time for folks to stop being played by the Obama campaign and drop this counter productive phony birth certificate nonsense.
FrontPageMag isn't the only one shooting down WND's birth certificate-related claims en masse. A Dec. 4, 2008, Slate article by David Wiegel describes birthers like Farah and WND as attempting "to overturn presidential results by any means necessary" and shoots down two significant claims, that the certificate released by Obama's campaign is a forgery and that Obama's grandmother confirmed that Obama was born in Kenya -- both of which were advanced at WND.
Even though both articles address numerous claims that have been made in numerous WND articles, WND has yet to even mention the existence of these articles, let alone substantively rebut them. What is WND afraid of? If WND won't defend the claims it has made, can we therefore interpret that those claims are indefensible?
What's WND's relationship with Orly Taitz? Why won't WND tell the truth about Taitz or the intra-birther lawsuit?
ConWebWatch has detailed the close relationship between WND and Taitz -- not only has WND supplied Taitz with copies of the petition signatures it refuses to make public (which Taitz then foisted upon Chief Justice John Roberts during a speech in Idaho), WND has published a sycophantic profile of her and Farah has drooled, " I have to tell you, this lady is rapidly becoming one of my heroes."
Conspicuously absent from WND, meanwhile, is any mention of her recent troubles.
In April, a formal complaint was filed in the California bar against Taitz. Among the allegations in the complaint:
Taitz is indiscriminately hurled charges of treason and called for an armed revolt against the federal government. She actively recruited clients in a state where she is not licensed to practice law. She has repeatedly disrespected judges and officers of the court. She has made false and misleading claims in court filings. She has not properly accounted for money she has raised to further her crusade.
WND has refused to report on either the complaint or the lawsuit. The silence could be interpreted as speaking volumes, since at the same time WND appears to have stopped promoting Taitz -- WND hasn't featured any claim made by Taitz since May 9.
Why won't WND pay $10,000 to Sarah Obama?
Farah announced on June 22 that he was offering "a $10,000 reward to anyone who can prove he or she was present at the birth of Barack Obama." So why hasn't he sent one to Sarah Obama?
WND has repeatedly asserted that Sarah Obama, Barack Obama's paternal grandmother, witnessed Barack's birth in Kenya. Even the article touting Farah's reward makes that claim.
If Sarah Obama's claim is good enough for WND news stories, why isn't Jerome Corsi making another trip to Kenya to personally hand over a wad of cash to Sarah Obama? Because, it seems, that Farah has a higher standard of accuracy when his own money (near as we can tell) is on the line as opposed to what's left of WND's journalistic reputation.
The article went on to state:
To collect the reward, the subject must: 1. Agree to an interview with WND journalists;
2. Provide persuasive evidence, such as pictures, documents or verifiable details;
3. Agree to a polygraph test.
WND has never demanded such documentation before. Further, there's a subtext here : By not handing over cash to Sarah Obama after repeatedly reporting the claim she is purported to have made, WND is tacitly admitting that it can't prove the claim at all.
That's because it's not true. As ConWebWatch has detailed, the claim rests on a selectively edited transcript and confused translators.
If WND can't prove Sarah Obama's purported claim to the point that it will pay her $10,000, why does it insist on repeatedly asserting that she made such a claim?
BECAUSE THEY ARE SCAM CON ARTISTS.
Why does WND think it can lie to its readers about Obama?
One of those newly invented lies came in a June 15 column by Farah, in which he asserted that Obama's mother, Stanley Ann Dunham, "was too young to have qualified under the law for bestowing that privilege on her son, even if the father had been a citizen and even in the unlikely event Obama was actually born in Hawaii!" But like so many other claims WND has made about Obama, that claim has been discredited. From the Tribune Co. Washington Bureau blog The Swamp:
Hawaii was a state in 1961, when Obama was born. Any person born in the U.S. automatically is a "natural born citizen," said University of California Los Angeles law professor Eugene Volokh.
Even if a person is born outside the United States, courts have ruled any child born to at least one U.S. citizen is a U.S. citizen, Volokh said. Stanley Ann Dunham would have counted even if Obama's Kenyan father did not.
If this becomes an issue in a post-election eligibility challenge, expect a likely sticking point to be the legal definition in 1961 of how parents could be called U.S. citizens for this purpose, Volokh said. At the time Obama was born, the law stated that a person would be considered a "natural born citizen" if either parent was a citizen who had lived at least 10 years in the U.S., including five years after the age of 14--in other words, 19.
Dunham was three months shy of her 19th birthday when Obama was born. But subsequent acts of Congress relaxed the requirement to five years in the U.S., including just two years after the age of 14, meaning Dunham could have been 16 and still qualified even if Obama was born in another country, Volokh said. Congress made the law retroactive to 1952, doubly covering Obama.
(Farah thought so much of this bogus claim that he repeated it in his June 17 column.)
Farah also claimed that a statement on Obama's "Fight the Smears" website contains an "amazing admission." That excerpt, taken from a FactCheck.org article to which Farah curiously fails to link, states:
When Barack Obama Jr. was born on Aug. 4,1961, in Honolulu, Kenya was a British colony, still part of the United Kingdoms dwindling empire. As a Kenyan native, Barack Obama Sr. was a British subject whose citizenship status was governed by The British Nationality Act of 1948. That same act governed the status of Obama Sr.s children.
Since Sen. Obama has neither renounced his U.S. citizenship nor sworn an oath of allegiance to Kenya, his Kenyan citizenship automatically expired on Aug. 4,1982.
Note that it specifically states Obama held U.S. citizenship at the time he held Kenyan citizenship as a child -- something Farah failed to acknowledge, since that inconvenient fact would destroy the argument he's trying to make. Since Farah deprived his readers of a direct link to the FactCheck article, his readers don't know that it did not dispute the fact that Obama is, and always has been, a U.S. citizen.
Further, at no point does Farah offer evidence to prove his larger argument --that Obama holding dual citizenship as a child, or having one parent who was not an American citizen, fails to fulfill the "natural born citizen" requirement of the Constitution for presidential eligibility.
* * *
If WND's anti-Obama birth certificate crusade is known for anything, it's a record of false claims, refusal to report relevant facts, and a lack of full disclosure about its agenda. Its refusal to answer such basic questions, be honest with the public and provide verifiable proof of the claims its makes only heighten the secrecy WND has chosen to surround itself with.
Throughout all of this, WND has demonstrated that it does indeed have something to hide -- the truth. If it tells the truth, it is exposed as the liar it is, and the credibility of Farah's baby is destroyed once and for all.
That day is here. Those of us with a working brain know WND for what it is—a scam.
Those bozos at WND don’t care, they have made millions off the most gullible bunch of simpletons there is---uneducated conservatives who will believe anything.
In the face of utter humiliation, is it any wonder that Farah and WND have chosen to lie and mislead -- which will ultimately lead them down the same path to humiliation anyway?
They made at least a few million bucks and PT Barnum would be proud.
To learn more about John Burros and his campaign for State Representative in Illinois’ 9th district, visit www.johnburros.com. To get involved, respond to this posting or follow the instructions on the website. No prior experience is required.
GOD got the message and hes left us alonre with our Free will and because of our FREE WILL THERE IS BARRACK HUSSEIN OBAMA and OBAM ACARE and 15 % Unemployment and OPEN KILLING IN THE STREETS,PLUNDERING,RAPING,Television with nothing but Sex and Violance anytime you watch,False Profits on TV everywhere.
A declassified report released yesterday by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence revealed that U.S. intelligence analysts were strongly disputing the alleged links between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda while senior Bush administration officials were publicly asserting those links to justify invading Iraq.
Far from aligning himself with al-Qaeda and Jordanian terrorist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, Hussein repeatedly rebuffed al-Qaeda's overtures and tried to capture Zarqawi, the report said. Tariq Aziz, the detained former deputy prime minister, has told the FBI that Hussein "only expressed negative sentiments about [Osama] bin Laden."
The report also said exiles from the Iraqi National Congress (INC) tried to influence U.S. policy by providing, through defectors, false information on Iraq's nuclear, chemical and biological weapons capabilities. After skeptical analysts warned that the group had been penetrated by hostile intelligence services, including Iran's, a 2002 White House directive ordered that U.S. funding for the INC be continued.
The newly declassified intelligence report provided administration critics with fresh ammunition, less than two months before midterm elections and in the middle of President Bush's campaign to refocus the public's attention away from Iraq and toward the threat of terrorism. Senior Senate Democrats immediately seized on the findings, using some of their strongest language yet to say the president continues to willfully and falsely connect Hussein to al-Qaeda.
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As recently as Aug. 21, Bush suggested a link between Hussein and Zarqawi, the leader of al-Qaeda in Iraq, who was killed by U.S. forces this summer. But a CIA assessment in October 2005 concluded that Hussein's government "did not have a relationship, harbor, or turn a blind eye toward Zarqawi and his associates," according to the report.
"The president is still distorting. He's still making statements which are false," said Sen. Carl M. Levin (D-Mich.), an intelligence committee member.
The partial release of the report came after nearly three years of partisan wrangling over what is to be a five-chapter analysis of the use of prewar intelligence in the run-up to the 2003 invasion of Iraq. The heart of the report -- a detailed comparison of administration statements with the intelligence then available -- is far from release. But the committee voted Thursday to release two chapters, one on the role that Iraqi exiles played in shaping prewar intelligence, the other on the accuracy of the prewar analyses of Hussein's nuclear, chemical and biological weapons capabilities and his suspected links to al-Qaeda and the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
White House spokesman Tony Snow dismissed the findings as old news. "If we have people who want to re-litigate that, that's fine," he said.
But Republican attempts to paint the findings as a partisan rehash were undercut by intelligence committee members from the GOP. The committee report's conclusions are based on the Democrats' findings because two Republicans -- Sens. Olympia J. Snowe (Maine) and Chuck Hagel (Neb.) -- supported those findings.
"After reviewing thousands of pages of evidence, I voted for the conclusions that most closely reflect the facts in the report," Snowe said in a written statement. "Policy-makers seemingly discounted or dismissed warnings about the veracity of critical intelligence reports that may have served as a basis for going to war."
Committee Chairman Pat Roberts (R-Kan.) was emphatic this week that Iraqi exiles did not fundamentally shape the critical assessment of the Iraqi threat in the 2002 National Intelligence Estimate.
But, as Snowe emphasized in her statement, the report concluded that information provided by an INC source was cited in that estimate and in Secretary of State Colin L. Powell's February 2003 speech to the United Nations as corroborating evidence about Iraq's mobile biological weapons program. Those citations came despite two April 2002 CIA assessments, a May 2002 Defense Intelligence Agency fabrication notice and a July 2002 National Intelligence Council warning -- all saying the INC source may have been coached by the exile group into fabricating the information.
Democrats and Republicans agree that analysts and politicians of all political stripes were wrong about the prewar assessments of Hussein's weapons of mass destruction. But the committee report indicates that intelligence analysts were substantially right about Hussein's lack of operational links to al-Qaeda. And Democrats compared the administration's public statements with newly declassified intelligence assessments to build their case that efforts to link Iraq to al-Qaeda were willfully misleading.
In a classified January 2003 report, for instance, the CIA concluded that Hussein "viewed Islamic extremists operating inside Iraq as a threat." But one day after that conclusion was published, Levin noted, Vice President Cheney said the Iraqi government "aids and protects terrorists, including members of al-Qaeda."
Intelligence reports in June, July and September 2002 all cast doubts on a reported meeting in Prague between Iraqi intelligence agents and Sept. 11 hijacker Mohamed Atta. Yet, in a Sept. 8, 2002, appearance on NBC's "Meet The Press," Cheney said the CIA considered the reports on the meeting credible, Levin said.
In February 2002, the Defense Intelligence Agency concluded that "Iraq is unlikely to have provided bin Laden any useful [chemical and biological weapons] knowledge or assistance." A year later, Bush said: "Iraq has also provided al-Qaeda with chemical and biological weapons training."
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Sen. Christopher S. Bond (R-Mo.), an intelligence committee member, said it was unfair for Democrats to compare the intelligence assessments in the report with the administration's statements. He said such comparisons go beyond the scope of the chapters released.
But Democrats were unequivocal in asserting that the chapters chronicle an indisputable pattern of deception.
If you have any proof, then simply provide it – post proof of invoices to Bush, Cheney, and/or any other US government officials! It’s real easy, just post PDF’s, TIF’s, .DOC’s, JPG’s and/or any other documentation consisting of invoices, bills, and/or any other documents proving such outlandish claims!
Secondly, AL Queda in Iraq began immediately following the liberation of Afghanistan. AL Zarqoui fled to Iraq immediately after being injured in Afghanistan and founded the prominent terrorist organization long before the liberation of Iraq began!
Morons like you repeating insurance company lies are what kept us from getting it.
I hope that you get sick and lose your job. Then you'll know what it's like to be at the mercy of an insurance company. I hope you're prepared to spend everything that you ever saved and sell everything you own, because that is what'll happen.
I hope that it happens to all of you Fox News watching Teabagging idiots. You'll get the point then
. 50 Million Uninsured in America
2. Another 25 Million Underinsured
3. Employer-Based Coverage Plummets Below 60%
4. Employer Health Costs to Jump by 9% in 2010. Expected to double AGAIN over next 10 years
5. One in Five Americans Forced to Postpone Care
6. 62% of U.S. Bankruptcies Involve Medical Bills
7. Current Health Care Costs Already Fueling Job Losses
8. 94% of Health Insurance Markets in U.S Now "Highly Concentrated"
9. Dramatic Decline in Emergency Room Capacity
10. Perpetuating Red State Health Care Failure
So given all that, what is the Republican Party's entire platform in eight words:
Do you know who the "insurgents" and Al Qaida in Iraq are? They are the military that we fired when we got there and other Muslim's that were recruited based on what they consider (maybe correctly) our imperialist takeover of their holy lands.
Our invasion of Iraq was the best terrorist recruiting tool in the history of terrorism.
Part of that supply equation is the OPEC output. They control the supply in league with the other major oil producing nations of the world. The main factors in demand are overall economic strength, which determines demand.
The third major factor is political instability in the Gulf region. What effect do you think a war has on that factor? Oh, you didn't think about that?
And Iraq didn't just benefit the oil companies who are now dividing up Iraq's oil with long term contracts, it also benefitted the companies getting contracts there ala Haliburton and Blackwater--all friends of the Bush/Cheney regime I might add.
All in all, there was hundreds of billions to go around.
You can’t bring in Wall Street banksters, like Bush’s architect for banksters’ bailout, Tim Geithner, or Bush’s war profiteer whore, DIANNE FEINSTEIN, or have the walking clown, Joe Biden and mean change!
OBAMA is only concerned with getting jobs for ILLEGALS! It is the biggest corporate welfare program in American history. We pay for the Mexicans’ crime wave, birthing, welfare, and depressed wages.
In this county CORPORATE PROFITS can never be HIGH ENOUGH. Wages can never be LOW ENOUGH!
Hence the FORTUNE 500 are major donors to LA RAZA… “The Race”, for the ever expansion of the MEXICAN WELFARE STATE = “CHEAP” LABOR!
The Mexican occupation, which OBAMA is now pushing for “amnesty handout” has depressed wages $300 - $400 BILLION PER YEAR!
*
Blacks hit hard by economy's punch
34.5 percent of young African American men are unemployed
By V. Dion Haynes
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, November 24, 2009
These days, 24-year-old Delonta Spriggs spends much of his time cooped up in his mother's one-bedroom apartment in Southwest Washington, the TV blaring soap operas hour after hour, trying to stay out of the streets and out of trouble, held captive by the economy. As a young black man, Spriggs belongs to a group that has been hit much harder than any other by unemployment.
Joblessness for 16-to-24-year-old black men has reached Great Depression proportions -- 34.5 percent in October, more than three times the rate for the general U.S. population. And last Friday, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that unemployment in the District, home to many young black men, rose to 11.9 percent from 11.4 percent, even as it stayed relatively stable in Virginia and Maryland.
His work history, Spriggs says, has consisted of dead-end jobs. About a year ago, he lost his job moving office furniture, and he hasn't been able to find steady work since. This summer he completed a construction apprenticeship program, he says, seeking a career so he could avoid repeating the mistake of selling drugs to support his 3-year-old daughter. So far the most the training program has yielded was a temporary flagger job that lasted a few days.
"I think we're labeled for not wanting to do nothing -- knuckleheads or hardheads," said Spriggs, whose first name is pronounced Dee-lon-tay. "But all of us ain't bad."
Construction, manufacturing and retail experienced the most severe job losses in this down economy, losses that are disproportionately affecting men and young people who populated those sectors. That is especially playing out in the District, where unemployment has risen despite the abundance of jobs in the federal government.
Traditionally the last hired and first fired, workers in Spriggs's age group have taken the brunt of the difficult economy, with cost-conscious employers wiping out the very apprenticeship, internship and on-the-job-training programs that for generations gave young people a leg up in the work world or a second chance when they made mistakes. Moreover, this generation is being elbowed out of entry-level positions by older, more experienced job seekers on the unemployment rolls who willingly trade down just to put food on the table.
The jobless rate for young black men and women is 30.5 percent. For young blacks -- who experts say are more likely to grow up in impoverished racially isolated neighborhoods, attend subpar public schools and experience discrimination -- race statistically appears to be a bigger factor in their unemployment than age, income or even education. Lower-income white teens were more likely to find work than upper-income black teens, according to the Center for Labor Market Studies at Northeastern University, and even blacks who graduate from college suffer from joblessness at twice the rate of their white peers.
Young black women have an unemployment rate of 26.5 percent, while the rate for all 16-to-24-year-old women is 15.4 percent.
Victoria Kirby, 22, has been among that number. In the summer of 2008, a D.C. publishing company where Kirby was interning offered her a job that would start upon her graduation in May 2009 from Howard University. But the company withdrew the offer in the fall of 2008 when the economy collapsed.
Kirby said she applied for administrative jobs on Capitol Hill but was told she was overqualified. She sought a teaching position in the D.C. public schools through the Teach for America program but said she was rejected because of a flood of four times the usual number of applicants.
Finally, she went back to school, enrolling in a master's of public policy program at Howard. "I decided to stay in school two more years and wait out the recession," Kirby said.
On a tightrope
The Obama administration is on a tightrope, balancing the desire to spend billions more dollars to create jobs without adding to the $1.4 trillion national deficit. Yet some policy experts say more attention needs to be paid to the intractable problems of underemployed workers -- those who like Spriggs may lack a high school diploma, a steady work history, job-readiness skills or a squeaky-clean background.
“Increased involvement in the underground economy, criminal activity, increased poverty, homelessness and teen pregnancy are the things I worry about if we continue to see more years of high unemployment," said Algernon Austin, a sociologist and director of the race, ethnicity and economy program at the Economic Policy Institute, which studies issues involving low- and middle-income wage earners.
Earlier this month, District officials said they will use $3.9 million in federal stimulus funds to provide 19 weeks of on-the-job training to 500 18-to-24-year-olds. But even those who receive training often don't get jobs.
"I thought after I finished the [training] program, I'd be working. I only had three jobs with the union and only one of them was longer than a week," Spriggs, a tall slender man wearing a black Nationals cap, said one afternoon while sitting at the table in the living room/dining room in his mother's apartment. "It has you wanting to go out and find other ways to make money. . . . [Lack of jobs is why] people go out hustling and doing what they can to get by."
"Give me a chance to show that I can work. Just give me a chance," added Spriggs, who is on probation for drug possession. "I don't want to think negative. I know the economy is slow. You got to crawl before you walk. I got to be patient. My biggest problem [which prompted the effort to sell drugs] is not being patient."
The economy's seismic shift has been an equal-opportunity offender, hurting various racial and ethnic groups, economic classes, ages, and white- and blue-collar job categories. Nevertheless, 16-to-24-year-olds face heavier losses, with a 19.1 percent unemployment rate, about nine points higher than the national average for the general population.
Their rate of employment in October was 44.9 percent, the lowest level in 61 years of record keeping, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Employment for men in their 20s and early 30s is at its lowest level since the Great Depression, according to the Center for Labor Market Studies.
Troubling consequences
Unemployment among young people is particularly troubling, economists say, because the consequences can be long-lasting. This might be the first generation that does not keep up with its parents' standard of living. Jobless teens are more likely to be jobless twenty-somethings. Once forced onto the sidelines, they likely will not catch up financially for many years. That is the case even for young people of all ethnic groups who graduate from college.
Lisa B. Kahn, an economics professor at Yale University who studied graduates during recessions in the 1980s, determined that the young workers hired during a down economy generally start off with lower wages than they otherwise would have and don't recover for at least a decade.
"In your first job, you're accumulating skills on how to do the job, learning by doing and getting training. If you graduate in a recession, you're in a [lesser] job, wasting your time," she said. "Once you switch into the job you should be in, you don't have the skills for that job."
Some studies examining how employers review black and white job applicants suggest that discrimination may be at play.
"Black men were less likely to receive a call back or job offer than equally qualified white men," said Devah Pager, a sociology professor at Princeton University, referring to her studies a few years ago of white and black male job applicants in their 20s in Milwaukee and New York. "Black men with a clean record fare no better than white men just released from prison."
*
November 21, 2009
Jobless Rate Up in 29 States, Hitting Records in 4 of Them
By BLOOMBERG NEWS
California, Delaware, South Carolina and Florida registered record rates of unemployment in October, the Labor Department said Friday.
Joblessness rose in 29 states last month compared with 22 in September, the agency said in a monthly state breakdown. Michigan had the highest jobless rate at 15.1 percent, followed by Nevada at 13 percent and Rhode Island at 12.9 percent.
The unemployment rate fell in 13 states, including Massachusetts, where it declined to 8.9 percent from 9.3 percent; New Hampshire, with a drop to 6.8 percent from 7.2 percent; and West Virginia, which fell to 8.5 percent from 8.9 percent.
The number of states with at least 10 percent unemployment held at 14 last month, the Labor Department’s report showed. In the states reporting record jobless rates, California was at 12.5 percent; South Carolina, 12.1 percent; Florida, 11.2 percent; and Delaware at 8.7 percent. The District of Columbia also set a high with an 11.9 percent rate.
“Virtually every sector aside from the health care sector is losing jobs,” said Sean Snaith, an economist at the University of Central Florida in Orlando, Fla. “Housing has been central to Florida’s economic story throughout the entire cycle. Unfortunately, it has spread well beyond the sectors directly involved in the housing market.”
Payrolls declined last month in 21 states, the report showed. New York showed the biggest drop, with 15,300 jobs lost. Florida had 8,500 job losses, followed by Georgia with 7,500 and Virginia with 7,100.
Over the last year, California showed the biggest loss of jobs, with payrolls falling by 687,700 workers, the report showed.
WSWS.org
US home foreclosures at record high as jobs crisis deepens
By Andre Damon
20 November 2009
The number of home loans in the US that are either in foreclosure or at least one payment past due reached one in seven last month, a record high, according to a survey released Thursday by the Mortgage Bankers Association.
The survey found that nearly 10 percent of mortgage holders were at least one payment behind on their mortgages, while 4.47 percent of were in foreclosure. Both of these are the highest figures on records dating back to 1972. About 7 million households are behind on payments or in foreclosure.
These figures present just one indicator of the worsening conditions facing US workers caught up in the longest economic downturn since the Great Depression. The number of people behind on their mortgage payments has doubled since last year, as has the percentage in foreclosure, according to the survey.
The foreclosures were spread throughout all borrower categories, with high-quality, fixed-rate mortgages showing the fastest growth in delinquencies, not the sub-prime mortgages that initiated the foreclosure crisis.
LPS Applied Analytics, which also recently released a survey of late mortgage payments, found similar figures. The LPS survey found that the number of people three months behind on their payments, but not yet in foreclosure, reached 3.4 percent of US households, up from 1.5 percent 12 months before.
Unemployment is now a primary cause of home foreclosures. MBA chief economist Jay Brinkmann told Reuters: “It is all about unemployment, everything else is secondary. We expect unemployment to keep rising into the first quarter of 2010, which means we will most likely see even higher rates of delinquencies and foreclosures.”
New unemployment claims stayed at 505,000 last week, according to figures released Thursday by the Labor Department. Economists were expecting a decrease in the number of new filings, but this did not materialize. The official US unemployment rate reached 10.2 percent in October, while the “real” unemployment rate, which includes involuntary part-time workers and those who have left the labor market, soared to 17.5 percent.
Home construction starts likewise showed an unexpected slump last month, falling 10.6 percent from September. There were 529,000 new housing construction projects last month, significantly lower than the 600,000 expected by analysts. “As we look out to 2010, we are expecting difficult conditions to continue,” said Richard Dugas, chief executive of Pulte Homes, the largest US homebuilder.
The White House extended its first-time homebuyer tax credit this month to April 2010. Once this measure expires analysts expect a further deterioration in housing prices. Average real estate prices doubled in the first six years of this decade, but have fallen by 30 percent since 2006, with no recovery yet in sight.
The slew of bad data led several economists to revise their estimates for the fourth quarter growth downward. Macroeconomic Advisors, for example, revised its forecast down from 3.2 percent to 3 percent.
Companies continued to announce mass layoffs this week. America Online announced plans on Thursday to cut one third of its 6,900-person workforce ahead of its planned spinoff from Time Warner, Inc. At its height, the company employed 20,000 people. Aetna, the health insurer, announced Wednesday that it plans to lay off 3.5 percent of its 35,000 employees.
Those workers who have not been laid off are facing speedups and higher workloads. A survey of employers released Wednesday showed that half of employees report an increased workload over the previous six months, which contributed to a quarter of employees reporting “low morale.”
While the Confidence Board’s leading indicator, which estimates future economic growth, increased for the seventh month in a row, the rate of its growth slowed significantly in October. The index grew by 0.3 last month, down from 1 percent in September.
As the number of unemployed continues to increase, benefits are becoming harder to come by. A program passed this year that subsidizes healthcare for unemployed people is set to expire December 1st for the first people to take advantage of it. The subsidy, which paid for 65 percent of health-insurance costs for nine months, has not yet been extended. People who lose medical coverage for 63 days or more may not be covered for pre-existing conditions when they reapply for insurance.
Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke highlighted the devastating impact of the crisis in a speech before the National Economic Club Monday, warning of continued loan defaults and high unemployment. Bernanke noted that the number of people working part-time involuntarily has more than doubled since the beginning of the recession, while the average workweek for manufacturing workers has fallen to the lowest level in postwar history.
The Fed chairman noted the impact of the cost-cutting programs being put into effect by US companies, saying that, “together with the reduction in hours worked, slower wage growth has led to stagnation in labor income.” He summed up the conditions facing workers: “The best thing we can say about the labor market right now is that it may be getting worse more slowly.”
High unemployment is in fact a deliberate policy of the Obama administration, which is seeking to drive down the conditions of the working class in order to restore profitability of American companies. Obama has rejected any serious jobs program or further stimulus measures.
Meanwhile, Wall Street profits are likely to set a new record this year, according to a report released Tuesday by New York State Comptroller Thomas P. DiNapoli. The report noted that Goldman Sachs, Merrill Lynch, Morgan Stanley and a section of JPMorgan Chase are set to make $22.5 billion this year, compared to losses of $40.3 billion last year. There is every likelihood that the year-end bonuses at these banks will be equally unprecedented.
The group is a direct successor of al-Zarqawi's previous organization, Jama'at al-Tawhid wal-Jihad ("Group of Monotheism and Jihad"), active between early 2003 and late 2004. Beginning with its official statement declaring allegiance to Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda network in October 2004, the group identifies itself as Tanzim Qaidat al-Jihad fi Bilad al-Rafidayn (QJBR) ("Organization of Jihad's Base in the Country of the Two Rivers").[5]
Who exactly do you think was President when they made the decision to go into Iraq?
You stated that this war was the response to them attacking us. Again, you are delusional.
Iraq had nothing to do with Al Qaida or 9/11 and no intelligence agency (emphasis on intelligence) of any major nation, including our CIA would tell you different. He also didn't have any WMD's and wasn't a threat to anyone but his own people. We had no problems with the Shah or the Contras because they were our despots. The powers that be had a problem with Saddam because the world's 2nd largest oil producer had not let U.S. oil companies make a dollar off of their oil since 1973.
If going to war with them was necessary. Why did the Bush White House have a special unit to cook up the intelligence on Iraq themselves to provide the "evidence" for the war. This was just one of hundreds of lies that we got from that criminal regime. And you asshats have the nerve to praise them and condemn Obama when he has done nothing but the correct things so far? You are idiots.
Try these on for size. It might spin your wingnut head like a top.