Friggin Hilarious...

It is with great sadness and regret that I must inform you that the Morning Q program I had the honor to host with Bettyjean Kling will no longer be broadcast. Apparently the folks at No Quarter do not think that what we were doing was anything they wanted to be associated with. Or at least what I was was doing. And because we began this project under the No Quarter brand we must do as they request.

I want to first thank our wonderful producers V and LadyBoomerNYC for all of their very hard work. They are exceptional individuals that I had the pleasure to work with closely, if only briefly. I have nothing but immense respect for both of them.

They were the heart and soul of the show.

And I want to thank my co-host Bettyjean Kling. She is an outstanding person that I am so grateful to have met, gotten to know and work with. We quickly became friends and I treasure her more than I can say. I don't know what I did to deserve meeting and working with her.

But I am eternally grateful that I did.

As to the folks at No Quarter, I wish them the best. I wish things were otherwise but they aren't. And if my inexperience and awkwardness doing these past 5 shows has caused them embarrassment I apologize. It was not intentional. I gave it my best shot.

So I suck as a radio host. Whatever.

Finally, I want to thank our excellent guests and the many listeners that were willing to look past the quirks and appreciate what we tried to do. We really did try to be there for you.

Thank you, all of you, for your kind words of support.

Pagan

So, Obama is fake because he has a speech writer (the horror!), used phrases by Patrick Deval which Devel gave to him (because, you know, that's evil), and he's used phrases which were used by someone at some point in the past (did you know that one phrase he uses is an old Hopi Indian saying?! Can Obama not come up with something original?!).  Did you also know that he has campaign advisers as well?  Shocking, I know.  Meanwhile, we all know that John McCain's campaign is a one man show.  He does everything! He even puts out the plastic plates and silverware at his offices' parties!  Amazing, John McCain!

Meanwhile, I don't hear them complaining about McCain using Hillary's "ready on day one" line very much.

But seriously, I hope these people go back 10 years from now and read what they're writing today and realize just how incredibly stupid they all sound.

These guys aren't too shabby either, in one of their versions:

Be sure to check out their whole "No Quarter" DVD. Fan-freakin'-tastic...

Photographs of the Colombian military intelligence-led team that spearheaded the rescue, shown to CNN by a confidential military source, show one man wearing a bib with the Red Cross symbol. The military source said the three photos were taken moments before the mission took off to persuade the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia rebels to release the hostages to a supposed international aid group for transport to another rebel area.

Such a use of the Red Cross emblem could constitute a "war crime" under the Geneva Conventions.

Right, so there's the basis of the problem. An UNNAMED and UNCITED source within the government showed "pictures" to CNN, (which CNN did not purchase by the way due to an exorbitant cost) that supposedly show Red Cross markings on the helicopter and uniforms of the brave men who flew it in.

However, there are other problematic quotes in this article by CNN that lead me to question the authenticity of both the purported photos AND of the reporting involved in this article.

Both of Colombia's two main guerrilla armies, the FARC and the smaller National Liberation Army, have been known to misuse the Red Cross symbol, sometimes transporting fighters in ambulances. The Colombian government frequently makes international denunciations of rebel violations of international humanitarian law.

First off it appears that the terrorist organization that is at war with the legitimate government of Columbia regularly abuses the Red Cross symbol as a way to shuffle hostages, fighters, and other items around the country. In fact, their doing this is commonplace and is possibly aided by various organizatons like say, the Red Cross and other aid organizations.

The rescue ruse also included bogus communications, sent electronically and by human couriers, to convince FARC rebels that superiors were ordering them to hand over hostages to the group posing as aid workers for transfer to another rebel camp.

Apparently these terrorists use those symbols and organizations for prisoner transport so often that they don't even question why an aid organization would be helping them transport hostages who have been held for up to ten years. Add the following facts to the situation: Terrorists are excluded from the Geneva Convention BY NAME, FARC is a terrorist organization as judged by the majority of the world, including the United Nations, Columbia, the EU, the USA, and the rest of the civilized world, and Terrorists/Insurgents are not signatories of the Geneva Convention.

In fact organizations like FARC, Al Queda, Fatah, and the other terrorist groups all ignore the Geneva Convention when they take hostages, kill civilians, torture prisoners, and break laws of war by hiding behind civilians and the like.

Now, of course these organizations are in conflict with more "civilized countries" who have their hands tied by the Geneva Convention that their enemies ignore. It's rather funny to me that organizations like CNN and the Red Cross are willing to take at face value "evidence" that they do not have on hand, do not know the authenticity of, or even have any means of proving to be true. Of course, they can't prove it came from a FARC member trying to raise a ruckus within their allies in the press and international community. They also can't prove it came from a government source either, but that's where they are pointing the finger.

Now, I'm not saying that it is, or is not true. But if Columbia used a trick from FARC's own playbook against them, then bravo I say. When fighting an unconventional war, you must use unconventional tactics. FARC has been doing their worst to civilians for now over fourty years, it's about time that their enemies started actually fighting back appropriatly.

There is just one action that I see that is appropriate for dealing with a terrorist force like the FARC, or indead, Al Queda. The act of Reprisal. Since this act is LEGAL under the Geneva Convention, and since FARC constantly violated the laws of war by taking hostages, killing hostages and civilians, reprisal is a viable option for dealing with scum like this.

Reprisal is a limited, deliberate, sanctioned, and LEGAL violation of the laws of war. Normally this is done as a punishment of an enemy who violates the laws of war. Seems to me that FARC has done that for now over 40 years. Sounds to me like conducting a reprisal is far past due. Since reprisal forbids harming battlefield casualties, shipwreck survivors, prisoners of war and civilians then I have the perfect suggestion.

No Quarter.

UPDATE Yes, it appears that the Columbian military did in fact use the Red Cross emblem in an effort to free the hostages. It is still irresponsible to declare this a violation of the laws of war. Currently I'm waiting for CNN to call for the hostages to be returned to the FARC.

NO QUARTER RADIO Live Internet Talk launches “Morning Q,” an exciting new show with BettyJean and Pagan. Tune in live on Tuesday, July 15, 10-11 am ET.

BettyJean and Pagan will be hosting a daily round-up of all things for PUMA and Just Say No Deal coalition members along with important news, action items, video reviews, and exciting guests. They’ll also be answering listener questions. The call-in number is (347) 677-0766.

Their kickoff show will feature an interview segment with videographer/artist, Hillacrat, whose brand new video, “Lord Of The Democrats,” was released on Monday, July 14, 2008.

BettyJean and Pagan will be hosting a daily round-up of all things for PUMA voters and the just say no dealers along with important news, action items, video pics, exciting guests, and we will be answering listener questions, the call-in number is (347) 677-0766.

Meet the Hosts:

Pagan: blogs at Pagan Power and No Quarter. He writes “I am opinionated. I am unusual. And I am stubborn. I say what is on my mind and I really don’t care if it pisses some people off. In fact, if what I have to say causes some people to feel uncomfortable I have probably done my job. I believe that we have an obligation to speak the truth regardless of the consequences. So gird your loins, get your head on straight and enjoy the ride. Or get lost!”

BettyJean: likes to say she has been a women’s right activist since birth and doesn’t care who knows how long that has been! Ask her- she tell you – that - and a whole lot more. She describes herself as a tough ol Italian broad from Hackensack , NJ. BettyJean, aka FreeMeNow writes a Newsletter called Free US Now. Bettyjean intends to write a book which she believes will initiate ‘The New Millennium Women’s Movement of 2008’

Action Items on the agenda:
+ July 19th. Resolution Day Events
+ Write a letter to Bill
+ Can You Face Me?

Video of the day !
+ TBA?

Fact or Fiction? From Time to time we may have a few questions for our viewers !
+ Who has not endorsed Obama?
+ Which 8 delegates switched back to Hillary?
+ Can vendors write off all or part of Hillary’s debt as a tax write off

E-mail Us: Send the correct answers : morningquarter@gmail.com

Join US!
Pagan & BettyJean Live on NQR Mornings at 10 AM

You may also use this thread to make suggestions as to what should be discussed tomorrow on the show.

I will publish a press release for the show as soon as it is written.

Thank you for your patience and your participation.

Don't forget to tune in to No Quarter Radio This morning. Click on the photo above to get there. 10AM EST. Be there...

They go on to say that "Obama is in serious trouble in Missouri, Ohio, Pennsylvania and, particularly, Florida."  While Missouri would be nice to have, it's not exactly a keystone state in the campaign (with apologies to Pennsylvania). Even so, Obama is within 5% in both Missouri and Florida - hardly a bad place to me.  In the meantime, he's leading in Ohio (within 5%) and ahead by over 5% in Pennsylvania.  I'm not sure how leading by over 5% in Pennsylvania - a state which Kerry only won by 2% and Gore only won by 4% is "being in serious trouble."

Secondly, even if you take out those four states, Obama is still looking at having about 240 to 245 Electoral votes wrapped up or well in his hands.  Winning any two of those states would be enough to put him over - or doing things like winning Virginia, Colorado, and Nevada/Alaska/Montana/North Dakota/enter your favorite battleground state here.

Obama isn't "consequently" going after other red states because he doesn't feel like he can win Ohio, Pennsylvania, Missouri, or Florida, but because Obama already has other swing states such as Minnesota, Wisconsin, Washington, New Hampshire, and New Jersey already all but sown up.  He's widening the playing field not because he's desperate, but because he's in about the best position any Democratic candidate has been in since Johnson.

Yes, they make a good point about Dukakis' "17 point lead" and such as to why no one can take Obama's election for granted, and I definitely agree with that.  However, one has to learn why that 17 point lead went away.

Part of it was due to Republican attacks, for sure, but Dukakis himself also noted this:

Dukakis himself blames his defeat on the time he spent doing gubernatorial work in Massachusetts during the few weeks following the Democratic Convention. Many believed he should have been campaigning across the country. During this time, his 17-point lead in opinion polls completely disappeared as his lack of visibility allowed Bush to define the issues of the campaign.

Yes, not campainging for a while in the key time that people are paying attention will do that to you.  Dukakis was also hurt by the fact that he was fairly aloof and wasn't necessarily a great speaker and was very analytical in nature - none of which seem to be issues with Obama.

One should also note that the 17 point lead was an 11 point post-convention bounce - a bounce which generally goes away after about two weeks anyway.  I think one could argue that using the 17 point lead example is kind of disengenuous to start with since it wasn't really a "true" lead to begin with.

Also, I find it kind of funny how Obama's 5 or 6 point national lead somehow proves that he's in trouble.  Perhaps it's the inner "it's better to lose than to win" in them. "Oh my god! We're winning! Quick! We have to mess up somehow to correct this error!"

Of course, given the "17 point lead example," they would still argue that Obama was in trouble, even if he had, well, a 17 point lead.

Larry Johnson's No Quarter, PUMA (People United Means Change), Just Say No Deal, Clintondems.com, Steve Corbett's Operation Turndown, and countless other organizations and individual Democrats are all saying "NO" to their party's nominee. This year's acrimonious primary underscores the widening division between the Democratic Party's traditional base (middle class and often blue collar workers) and the party's extreme left, as embodied by MoveOn.org.

So far, the above entities have the negative goal of turning down Obama, who is clearly out of touch with the party's base. This blog introduces a positive vision statement that disgruntled Democrats and like-minded Republicans can use to save the United States from economic disaster--a disaster that will be certain if we do not stop and reverse the loss of manufacturing capability to China and other offshore competitors. Joe Magarac wants his job back and, to get it, he has to take his party back from MoveOn.org, George Soros, and their fellow travelers.

Joe Magarac is the Paul Bunyan of the steel industry, and he was originally a folk figure for whom both Hungarian and Croatian immigrants took credit. (U.S. Steel later adopted him as an advertising icon as "Joe, the Genie of Steel.") "Magarac" is Croatian for "Donkey," which probably relates to Joe Magarac's work ethic--and it also happens to be the Democratic Party's symbol. "Joe Donkey" can therefore represent not only the steel industry, but all manufacturing and extractive industries, and the blue collar workers who make them work. When Barack Obama talked about "bitter" small town Pennsylvanians who "cling to guns and religion," he was talking about "Joe Donkey," and it's bad medicine to "disrespect" a giant steelworker with 21 electoral votes at his command!

Furthermore, according to some legends, Joe Magarac lies asleep in an abandoned steel mill, "waiting for the day that the furnace burns again." This symbolizes the need to revitalize the United States' heavy industries, which are the foundation of the country's economic and military security. We can therefore add Henry Ford's basic and unquestionable principles to our vision statement.

(1) Henry Ford made the United States the wealthiest and most powerful nation on earth.

• This is a statement of proven results, as opposed to an empty slogan like "Hope and Change."
• Ford's industrial methods, which are now known as lean manufacturing and the Toyota production system (Taiichi Ohno admits openly that he learned about lean manufacturing from Ford), created the blue collar middle class that makes up the Democratic Party's base.
• Ford's industries were so productive that he reduced the work week to forty hours and five days. It was previously common for people to work six days a week, and up to twelve hours a day. Ford's wages were so high, though, that workers made more in 40 hours than they previously made in 72.
• Ford's industries (e.g. the Willow Run bomber factory) overwhelmed the Axis with an endless supply of weapons and munitions during the Second World War. A cartoon of the First World War, in fact, portrayed Henry Ford as the Kaiser's most dangerous adversary.

(2) There are exactly three ways to create wealth: grow it, mine it, or make it.

• Houses are not sources of wealth, despite advertising pitches about how one can use one's home as a "source of cash" with which to fund vacations, second cars, and so on. This illusion came crashing down like a house of cards in 2007, in which home prices actually dropped below the amount that borrowers owed on them. Joe Magarac creates wealth; dot-com stocks, investment banks, and so on do not.
• The stock market does not produce wealth. It merely exchanges ownership in enterprises that will hopefully produce wealth. As shown by the crashes of various financial firms, anything that does not actually mine, grow, or make something is a questionable investment, although poorly-managed manufacturing firms also can fail.

(3) A Square Deal for Workers and Employers

• Henry Ford summarized effective industrial and labor relations in one sentence: "It ought to be the employer's ambition, as leader, to pay better wages than any similar line of business, and it ought to be the workman's ambition to make this possible" (My Life and Work, 1922).
• Although Ford disliked unions (a major part of the Democratic Party's base), he recognized that they were legitimate responses to "bosses who never did a decent thing for their employees until they were compelled" (My Life and Work, 1922). Ford's own workers neither needed nor wanted a union until Ford turned management of his company over to executives who went against Ford's own principles. As an example, Ford knew that laying off workers due to productivity improvements is the kiss of death to any lean manufacturing initiative, and he had a strict rule against it. By 1936, though, after Ford was no longer running the business, executives found ways to circumvent this rule without actually breaking it (per Upton Sinclair's The Flivver King).

Does Henry Ford sound, well, Republican? After all, Ford also said,

When you get a whole country—as did ours—thinking that Washington is a sort of heaven and behind its clouds dwell omniscience and omnipotence, you are educating that country into a dependent state of mind which augers ill for the future.

This is absolutely true, and the consequences of such thinking are evident in Europe's welfare states. As an example, employers are moving jobs out of France because France mandates 40 hours of pay for 35 hours of work (and there is even a story about French police whose job is to catch people who work more than 35 hours, for the purpose of fining their employers). Social Security is meanwhile proving to be a pyramid scheme, and our legislators have no real idea as to how they are going to fulfill the government's obligation to everyone who paid into the system.

On the other hand, Ford would have had no tolerance whatsoever for corporate welfare. Protectionist laws that inhibit Americans from purchasing medications from legitimate Canadian pharmacies exist to enrich the pharmaceutical companies at Americans' expense. This is corporate welfare at the expense of the American people.

In summary, Joe Magarac wants his job back, the United States needs to have him get his job back and, to do this, Joe Magarac needs to take back the Democratic Party. We therefore propose the name "Joe Magarac Democrats" for this movement.

Inevitability: Finding WPMs in Iraq and Obama as the DNC Nominee

Perhaps the meaning of inevitability should be couched in a post 9-11 definition.  Inevitability redefined means "because the Press and the Political Elite make it so."  Inevitable is no longer due to ANY underlying facts. We are no longer in a one person one vote world.  It is time to tell the DNC to stop its War on Democracy.

The Denver Group and its founders Heidi Li Feldman and Marc Rubin remind me of the early roots of Move-on and the few voices against the Iraq War I could find when I was trying to find a way to join a movement to prevent that war.  There were a few voices in the wilderness speaking truth, but the press and politicos were playing up the Slam Dunk of finding WMD in Iran like the second coming.  They even had up to 65% of the population believing that Saddam Hussein was behind the 9/11 attacks.   I can remember sitting in a restaurant discussing the inanity of any war in Iraq and being yelled at by many folks from the surrounding tables as being an unpatriotic peacenik. No amount of reason could stop the race towards this unnecessary war.  The Press and the Politicos wanted it.

Now, with so many realizing the truth, I can hardly believe we see the same tactics in play to anoint a DNC general election candidate based on lies and back room manipulations hidden from the general public.  Not only are they in play, they APPEAR TO BE WORKING!  Is the ordinary American really that stupid?  We now have  some folks working hard to play up the Slam Dunk claim that is Obama as Democratic Party Nominee.  Just as then Secretary of State Colin Powell was sent to the United Nations with phony evidence debunked by many within the CIA, Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, and Howard Dean are touting the inevitability of a unified party and an Obama ascendancy  by stacking the deck against reality and the truth.

Are you willing to let that happen?

I know Heidi and I've read Marc's blog since its inception.  I suggest you check out my links to Tom in Paine or Heidi Li's Potpourri in the side bar.  You can also get a great interview with them at this thread on No Quarter:  http://noquarterusa.net/blog/2008/07/03/breaking-nq-radio-interview-the-denver-group/  .  They are looking to make the DNC accountable for their actions during this primary season.

From their site:

Insuring that Senator Clinton's name is on the ballot requires sending a message to Howard Dean,the DNC and the country at large that the Democratic Party is playing with fire to even consider subverting democratic principles by removing her name and having anything less than an open honest convention.It also sends the message that the false sense of party unity that's being promoted by the Democratic Party and willingly repeated by the news media is just that -- false.

There are many factors conspiring to try and keep Senator Clinton's name off the ballot not the least of which is the fear by some that, given the events of the last few weeks, she could actually win.

At a dinner with Clinton donors two weeks ago, Senator Obama was asked if he supported Senator Clintons name on the ballot. His answer was that he wasn't there to negotiate the convention. We think its fair to say that if Senator Obama has his way her name wont be on the ballot and he will use all his influence with the DNC to accomplish that. A mass media approach is a very public way of pushing back and letting the DNC know there's another side watching and there will be dire consequences if that happens.

I'm still appalled by the complete lack of truthfulness and democracy that occurred during this primary season that may eventually lead us into a War Against Democracy in the same way we were led to a War Against Iraq under the guise of lies.  Take a real look at some of the things that are going on.

This from Clinton Dems:

There has been a concerted effort to flip every Clinton delegate, pledged or otherwise, to Obama to remove the possibility of Obama being upstaged at the convention.   You see, no one is the nominee at the convention until one of the candidates receives the magic number of delegates.  That is why Obama is strong-arming anyone that continues to stick with Hillary.

Obama is now working through state parties to pilfer more delegates pledged to Hillary or get Hillary supporters removed or replaced.  They are also bullying others to defect.  Just a few delegates switching to Hillary at this point could still cause Obama to LOOSE the Nomination in Denver. He is NOT inevitable in the traditional since.  He is only inevitable in the post 9-11 sense.  He is trying to be inevitable by lying, cheating, manipulating the press, threatening state level candidates, superdelegates, and parties.  After Super Tuesday, and after the release of the Wright videos, Obama lost the majority of the remaining contests.  He's considered ahead right now, ONLY, because his minions have bullied so many superdelegates and played the race card like a nuclear weapon.

And that's what they've done with their lateast post on Obama's birth certificate.

First there is this:

The first thing I noticed when I re-read the Kos story is that Kos does not explain how he acquired Obama’s certification, which seems curious given his alleged credentials as a serious blogger.

...

However, within the substantial body of comments (648 at this writing) to Kos’s diary, several posters referenced a comment by Kos in which he explains that he asked the Obama campaign for the certification via e-mail, and they sent it to him. The problem is that I cannot find the original comment from Kos which so many other posters reference; perhaps my search tool is not working well and I could not find it among the 648 comments, and someone else can locate it.

Here you go. OK that took about 10 seconds.

Second, there is this:

Second, this sentence by Kos caught my eye: “Note, I have trimmed the edges of the scan, so before someone tries to inevitably ‘debunk’ this based on the dimensions of a Hawaiian birth certificate, that should be noted.”

...

If the certification was sent to Kos by the Obama campaign electronically, why would he “trim” the “scan”? Why not just re-post the image that was sent to him the way that it was sent? Now, I write tons of html-coded diaries and all you need to do, if the original image is too big, is insert a measurement into the jpg code to decrease the size of the image.

Maybe to make it look better and cleaner, so it wouldn't look like this? Maybe?  Oh the horror! He trimmed the edges!

Third:

Third, I found a comment by Opendna about a third of the way into the comments section of Kos’s story, posted at 4:35:46 PM EST on June 12....

Where did Opendna get that template, which JimJ pointed out shows the same time and county as Obama’s alleged certification? And why did he boldly publish this template in a comment?

Given that opendna appears to have posted it as a joke in response to someone asking "where is McCain's birth certificate?," my guess is that he took the one Kos had posted and used photoshop to create the "template."  It wouldn't be hard to do, and is supported by the fact that it was posted by opendna in his own photobucket account.  Even further proof of it can be a second birth certificate posted on the same photobucket account with the name "Haye I. B. Ahphorgerie" (Hey, I be a forgery).

As to why it has the same time and county on it...probably because Opendna left it on it.  In response, I would ask why would a "template" even have a time and county (but nothing else) on it to begin with?

Fourth, luckily not a major point:

Finally, I noticed that Kos posted his diary at 11:44:37 AM EST on June 12, according to the DailyKos site. For some reason, though, the first comment, by “Addison” shows an earlier time: Thu Jun 12, 2008 at 11:10:34 AM EST. I don’t know how Kos’s timestamps operate, but I thought it was strange. Maybe someone else can explain.

Just a quirk sometimes on the site. It's not uncommon to have the datestamps on comments to be earlier than the post being commented on. Why it happens? I'm sure someone might know, but it isn't a sign of foul play or anything.

Fifth:

Although the certification posted by Kos and the one posted by the Obama campaign appear to be identical, people who have “peered” inside the images say that each has been opened in Photoshop or some other Adobe program.

...

Why would “Ducky” be working on Obama’s birth certificate? To cover up the certificate number with a black block? If that’s the reason, and it was sent to Kos after the certificate number was hidden, why then would Kos open this image in Photoshop? To “trim” it? (See questions above about that).

Yes, exactly. It was opened up in an image editor to put a black box on in the Obama's campaign. That should have been obvious from the start. The fact that they're just now realizing that's what happened seems to just show much little they know what they're talking about. And yes, then kos opened it up again to trim it so that it was cleaner. I probably would have used photoshop myself for both of these tasks and it basically means absolutely zero.

And to just add to their stupidity, they add this:

Please note again the prominent language at the bottom of the form: “ANY ALTERATIONS INVALIDATE THIS CERTIFICATE”.

Um, yeah? Your point is what? The digital version wouldn't be valid anyway in a court of law. The original, which I presume hasn't been altered, would be.

Next:

If Barack Obama ordered his certificate of birth, one would logically presume that upon receipt of that actual document, a simple scan would be made of both sides, and the images from the scans then published. The certificate number could have been covered with a simple piece of black tape before scanning the document.

Instead, if one is to believe that this certification is authentic, it appears that the Obama campaign scanned the document sent by Hawaii OHSM, then altered the scanned image in some kind of Adobe program. This should be explained in light of the importance of presenting an authentic document that has not been altered.

Oh dear god stop the stupid.

First, no, one wouldn't "logically presume" that a scan would be made of both sides. Why would they scan both sides, when one side doesn't have any of the birth information on it? I wouldn't have automatically scanned it.

Second, the very fact of the warning against altering the original is probably a good reason not to use a strip of black tape to cover the certificate number.

First off, if you left the tape on, it would obviously "alter" the document. Second, if they took the tape off and it ripped the paper, that would alter the document, making it invalid. Third, you're almost certainly going to have to run it through Photoshop to resize and straighten the image out anyway, even if you used tape to cover over the number (so you just as well do it digitally).

This argument of "OMG THEY OPENED IT IN PHOTOSHOP" is so fake since it is pretty obvious that they would have opened/did open it in an image editor at some point along the way to make cosmetic changes (trimming, covering up personal info, resizing and possibly straightening the image out, since one almost never scans something perfectly straight).

Finally:

There has been much written, also, about the missing embossed seal and registrar’s stamp/signature on Obama’s document. If it’s on the back, let’s see the entire document in real time (like at a press conference)....Obama should make available the long version of his birth certificate, which includes more detail about his birth. The State of Hawaii should have that on file, in case he’s lost the original that he said he had located in High School (per Dreams From My Father).

Why should Obama go out of his way to satisfy your own personal paranoia. He's released a certificate of birth. The State of Hawaii has confirmed it to be legitimate.  There is zero reason to doubt it's authenticity other than continued and unfounded paranoia (though I do like their note about someone at the Hawaii Department of Health "backtracking" on the legitimacy of the certificate of birth with no link, no quote, no nothing to actually say this is what they actually did (and given No Quarter's penchant for taking things out of context or otherwise picking and choosing, I think we definitely need an actual full quote in context of what was said to believe them).  Actually, I'd almost like a transcript of the entire conversation since No Quarter apparently called the Attorney General along the way too.  Did the Attorney General talk to the Department of Health, or did NQ talk to the Attorney General, then misrepresent to the Department of Health what the Attorney General told them?  We have no way to know.  Too bad they aren't as transparent as they demand Obama to be).

And somehow I have a feeling that even if he did what they asked of him, they'd find some reason to doubt it.  ("Oh, he waved A document in the air, but was it his real birth certificate?  We couldn't tell on TV!  We demand that he give his copy over to an unbiased media source (like us!) to check it out for themselves!" or "How do we know that that's his REAL long birth certificate? How do we know he didn't forge that too?)

See, even if he gave in and did that, they would just find another reason to doubt it, and it would give No Quarter and others the opportunity to challenge anything and everything of Obama's, making them waste time and resources to debunk every little thing, no matter how silly (which is, of course, exactly the point).

Update

I ran across this post showing how manipulating the image can bring out the seal, so I did it myself (I ran it through find edges once) and what do you know:

You can barely see it, but it is there. You can do it yourself by downloading the digital copy of the image and running "find edges" on it in Photoshop.  I'm sure someone else can maniulate the image better than I get bring it out more.

Update 2

Apparently the new thing is to disprove the seal by going and using a copy of the birth certficate from Polarik at Town Hall which used the "original" copy of the birth certificate on kos' site.

However, there are several problems with this:

First, the "last edited" date and time on Polarik's image is June 16th:

While the version currently linked from kos' post was last edited on June 12, the day kos posted the birth certificate:

Now, this means 1 of 2 things:

1) Either kos made an image on the 12, but linked it on the 16th or later, after Polarik grabbed his copy, or

2) Polarik's grabbed a copy of what is currently linked from kos' post

Also, you'll notice another difference:

The size of the image on kos' post is 2427x2369 while the resolution on Polarik's post is 1024x1000.  In other words, the image has been resized.

Not only this, but it has been resaved as a jpg at a lower quality.  This could just be a byproduct of resaving the image after resizing it, but you can definitely see the difference here:

The top text is from kos' version resized down to 1024x1000 in photoshop.  The second text is directly from Polarik's copy with no alterations.  You can clearly see that the 2nd version has more pixilation and is of lower quality (with both samples enlarged at the same time to maintain consistency).

Given how faint the seal is on Obama's certificate of birth, such a reduction in quality may very well be enough to obscure it if you try to run the same test that I did above on his version (and indeed, the seal doesn't show up when one does it - though it also has the interesting side effect of being much darker when I run the "find edges" filter - probably due to the increased pixilization of the image.

So we have a situation where we have an image linked from kos's site which either is the same version there originally, or was edited at the same time as the original, which shows a seal, or a version by Polarik which has been reduced in size and quality and created after kos' version, which doesn't show the seal.

To me the evidence on this one points in one direction -> the seal can't be seen on Polarik's version because of the increased pixilization on his copy due to resaving it.

Update 3

Indeed, saving the original copy at the same resolution as Polarik when doing "save for web" at 20% gets almost the same file size as the image Polarik has.  Indeed, saving it as such creates a similar amount of pixilation and, low and behold, if I run "find edges" on that image, the seal no longer appears.  I think this mystery is solved.

If 49% of Obama’s total campaign funds came from small donors ($200 or less), then 51% of his funds came from big donors ($201 or more). Thus, an actual majority of Obama’s campaign cash was generated from big donors.

That’s a vastly different picture than the 93% that some skim readers might misinterpret as Obama’s small-donor percentage.

OK, let's break this down.  First, I'm not sure I would consider doating $201 to be a "big donor," but whatever, I'll go with their definition of that for the time being.

To put this in context, Obama's campaign finance reports say that 93% of their contributions came from small contributions - meaning that 93% of contributions to their campaign were of $200 or less.  No Quarter believes that Obama is phrasing it like this to say that 93% of his contributions are from "small donors" while in fact, a majority (51%) of is contributors have given over $200, and thus Obama is some how a king of big donors or something.

However, this post is missing something critical:  Obama has been running for President for 16 months - it will be 17 months in about two weeks.   If someone gave $12.56 a month, every month, to Obama's campaign, they would now be a "big donor" according to No Quarter's standards.

While that may be technically true, it's hard to argue that you can portray people giving $15 or $20 or $50 a month to Obama on the same scale as those who have given hundreds or even thousands of dollars to his campaign.

Look, I'm hardly rich.  I'm paying off school loans, a car loan, credit cards, and rent, and I could probably afford $50 a month between now and the election.  I could give $250 between now and then at that rate, making me one of those evil "big donors" when I'm anything but.

In fact, the article makes all of these points, and uses them to blow off the 93% small contributions stat.  However, I think the opposite conclusion should be reached.

That's why I think the statistic about small donations vs. number of people who have given $200 total is significant in that it shows that Obama has a quite significant number of supporters who may not be able to write him a $500 check, but who is able to send off $20 or $50 every month, an will continue to do so.

Even if they have given, on total, over $200 to Obama, that shouldn't minimize the fact that they are lower or middle class Americans who still give donations out in smaller amounts - people who may not be technically "small donors" any more, but who are still, at heart, small donors.

And that's why I think the 93% stat is important because it shows how many traditional small donors are giving to his campaign, even if some of them have technically become "big donors" because of how much they've donated over time.

It is possible that Obama conspired his way to the precipice of the world’s biggest job, involving a vast network of people and government agencies over decades of lies. Anything’s possible.

But step back and look at the overwhelming evidence to the contrary and your sense of what’s reasonable has to take over.

There is not one shred of evidence to disprove PolitiFact’s conclusion that the candidate’s name is Barack Hussein Obama, or to support allegations that the birth certificate he released isn’t authentic.

It’s all over the press that beginning Friday, Hillary Clinton will be fundraising with the presumptive nominee, Barack Obama. For many of us, I’d say at least a few million, this is a nauseating thought. While we respect Hillary for her loyalty, we will not be joining her efforts. In fact, for me at least, Hillary’s choice to support Obama reminds me of the battered wife returning home to her batterer.

I'm trying to decide if this is sexist or not (it certainly has a slight smell of it), but now we have the start of the Hillary hold-outs basically saying that Hillary is that women beaten by her husband who runs away for a night or two, only to be lured back by her spouse to claims that he'll never do it again, and proceeds to beat her even more than what he did before, or something like that.

Of course, it's a bogus analogy to begin with, but that's not stopping them from using it. (Hell, at the absolute least, even if it were true that Obama beat Hillary up like a battered wife, supporting the political party of that candidate and going back to your husband are hardly comparable things, if for no other reason than one is grounded in reasoning and pragmatism and the other is generally grounded in raw emotions.  Wait, does that mean they're saying Hillary is emotional? I thought that was sexist?).

I still have to roll my eyes at the whole "we respect Hillary and all, but we're not going to abide by her will."  Well, then you don't friggen respect her then.

If you're going to piss on your party's nominee, then fine, but don't say you're going to do it for Hillary or somehow in the name of Hillary or anything about Hillary and talk about how great she is and how you respect her, and then totally ignore her when she asks you to support the party's nominee.

I also love how when Democratic leaders like Dean, et. al. come out and support Obama when he became the presumptive nominee, they were all drinking the kool-aid, but when Clinton does it...well, it's just her being a good democrat.

Thank FSM, this doesn't happen every time, as in once in a while I nail the putt or the basketball bomb, which is why I have so much love for this post. Every now and then I get it right. I have to say that calling your shot is a lot easier and more predictable in politics, relying on someone else, than it is in physical activity, counting only on one's self.

Kudos in order for J. cole. This was a good call.

1. The certificate is forged, but Obama used a real certificate of birth as a base
2. His certificate was only submitted, but not approved, and thus the certification isn't a certification at all.

First, let's tackle the first one.  The first line of thought is partially supported by the argument that since the certificate provided by a reader says "Date Accepted by State Registrar" and Obama's says "Date Files by Registrar," that that mistake proves that it's a fake, since it isn't the same.

However, this reasoning has one fatal flaw: If they followed everything else about the certificate to a tee, how in the world could they miss that?  The fact that it's different almost lends credence to the idea that it is legitimate, since, if they weren't sloppy anywhere else, how could they miss that?

The second theory deals with the difference in terminology, ie "accepted" vs. "filed."

Now, one thing I noticed is that Obama birth was in the 60s and the other Hawaiian certificate of birth was in the 30s.  Is it possible that there was a change in terminology from "accepted" to "filed" between now and then? Perhaps.  I don't know, but neither do the hold-outs either.

Second, even if it is somehow a difference in status, the paper still says "This copy serves as prima facie evidence of the fact of birth in any court proceedings."  In other words, if someone went to a court and said "Make Obama prove he was born in Hawaii!," he could take this to court and it would be accepted.  So "filed by" doesn't seem to make is to that it's not-official given what the paper says.

The other issue people bring up is the difference in colors and the raised seal on the 2nd certificate.  It's seems to me that either Obama's was scanned or altered (my guess is scanned) to increate the brightness or the other birth certificate was scanned or altered to darken the brightness.  This would explain why the green is lighter, why the text is lighter, and possibly even why the seal shows on one but not Obama's.

And of course the final, and most ridiculous claim, is that some how the black box is some sort of evidence it was fordged.  Duh, they (meaning the Obama campaign) blacked out the certificate number, probably because of identity theft fears or something.  I'm not sure how people take that as evidence of forgery.

One can assume a candidate has an electability problem when a majority of Americans (55%) do not believe that candidate views the society he desires to represent as “fair and decent.”

This coming from a blog whose sole purpose is to say how Obama, the DNC, the media, and life in general screwed Clinton out of the Democratic nomination because everyone is sexist or whatever.

Oh, and where did they get the 55%? By subtracting the 45% who says he does believe that society is fair and decent from 100%, despite the fact that the poll itself only said 39% believes he doesn't. What about the other 16%? Perhaps they don't know enough to render an opinion? It doesn't necessarily mean they think he doesn't view society as "fair and decent."

This also brings up another question:

If he doesn't view US society as fair and decent...so what?  Despite what the blog claims, not believing that society is "fair and decent" and having a fundamental love for your country aren't necessarily the same things.  If one doesn't believe that it is fair and decent, aren't you running for President so that you can try to change society to make it fair and decent?  Isn't saying that to be fit to be President you have to view the US as "fair and decent" kinda like saying that the US can do no wrong and can never do anything bad? Isn't that one of our beefs with the GOP, that they can't admit that the US could possibly ever do anything wrong? (The US is eternally great! Yay for us!)  What if US society really is fundamentally not fair and decent?

I guess that also brings up some confusion in the question: what exactly is meant by the "US society?"  It's people? It's government? A combination of both?  Something else?  If you see the war as evil and wealth being concentrated in the top 1% as bad, then you may very well see society as being unfair.  However, if you're talking about the people themselves, then perhaps one would be less likely to think that.

In fact, the more I think about it, the more the question seems poorly worded. I should note that only 60% of Americans in the survey felt that soceity was fair and decent.  Yes, it's a majority, but based on the argument above, 40% of Americans - including a majority of African Americans - aren't patriotic and, ironically, most of them are probably Democrats (an interesting thing for someone who is supposedly trying to save the Democratic Party from itself to say).

What’s important here is that half of the Democratic Party are now in exile.

Last time I checked, nearly 80% of Democrats said they would vote for Obama, and we still have just over 4 months to go. That is hardly "half" I would say.

But don't worry, there's more:

But that’s only the beginning of the shock and distrust now apparent in millions of (former) Democrats, the infamous 18 million Hillary-supporters. Among the great majority, there seems to be a consensus that the entire Democratic Party itself has been seized in a hostile takeover....

DownListen responded with “I think the fix was in before the primary.” And Carol, another blogger boldly states:

I have asked repeatedly on other sites, “Do we have the right to see all of the communications between Dean, DNC and Obama camp?” I believe the fix has always been in from the beginning.

So the "vast majority" of Clinton's 18 million voters think the party was taken over in a "hostile takeover?"  So if every single one of the 22% of Democrats who say they won't support Obama believe this, saying that this is half of Clinton's voters means that.....Clinton only got 44% of the vote.  Doesn't that mean she lost?

Also, these people have now become eqivilent to Freepers and Vice Foster conspiracy theorists with all this.  So the primary was fixed before hand?  The first questions to ask would be 1) What the hell for?, 2) How could they even fix it? and 3) If you can even answer the first two questions, why would the DNC spend that much time an energy on it, given that they're at such a cash disadvantage against the RNC anyway?

The answer to all of this is, of course, their person lost and they don't want to admit it.  The fact that people started to coalece around Obama at the end of May is easy: because he was obviously about to become the presumptive nominee.  PUMAs may like to whine that "there is no official nominee until the Convention" but really, you didn't hear this in 2004 or any other time for that matter.  The only other people you might hear it from are Paulites.

Meanwhile, they're still going on about both Obama's Certificate of Birth and Larry Sinclair and will probably only give up when Obama comes down from Mount Sinai with stone tablets saying that it's not true (but then how do we know that those aren't fake!).

Basically they've taken the position of "We have the right to ask these questions, no matter how aburd they are, and Obama must prove us wrong, and if he does anything other than that, then that shows that we're probably right!"

So despite all evidence to the contrary, Obama must prove he was born in Hawaii, even beyond what a court of law would require and he must prove a guy wrong - a guy which has no proof, is a convicted felon, had as of last week at least two outstanding warrants for his arrest, admits heavy cocaine use, failed a lie detector test (but that was staged too), and easily has the incentive of money and attention to just make shit up.  But Obama is required to prove him wrong.

Basically I could say "I saw Obama eating babies on the night of August 23, 1991 in a bar in Dodge City, Kansas" and they would rally around it and be like "OK Obama, prove this wrong! If you don't, then you are obviously an admitted baby eater!"

I'm just wondering what these people will say when Clinton and Obama have their joint campaign rally.  They'll probably bring up the old "she was blackmailed into it!" allegations again.  They've already used it against her before as well as against Al Gore.

Update:

P.S.: No one has still shown how, exactly, the DNC, or anyone else for that matter, "stole" enough delegates away from Clinton to give the nomination to Obama.  All they can come up with are vauge "well, the DNC must have fixed it all along" statements.  Basically the Democratic Primary equivilent of 9/11 "it was an inside job!" people.

The author Webster G. Tarpley posted a comprehensive and compelling story today at No Quarter about Larry Sinclair, his allegations, the press conference, his political imprisonment, and the problems with Barack Obama:

Washington DC, June 21 — Tonight political prisoner Larry Sinclair is spending his fourth night in the DC Jail, the victim of a Gestapo-style enemies’ list operation carried out just three blocks from the White House last Wednesday afternoon.

Sinclair had come to the National Press Club to detail his charges that the self-proclaimed Democratic presidential nominee Barack Hussein Obama had indulged in two homosexual encounters complete with crack cocaine in early November 1999, that Obama was complicit in the December 2007 assassination of Donald Young, the gay choirmaster of Jeremiah Wright’s Trinity United Church of Christ, and that’s Obama’s resident perception monger, David Axelrod, had paid the pornographic website Whitehouse.com $750,000 to organize a campaign of character assassination against Sinclair, culminating in a faked polygraph test. At the close of the press conference, Sinclair was arrested inside the press club by US Marshals and DC police, apparently based on an old Delaware warrant.

GESTAPO TACTICS IN THE NATIONAL PRESS CLUB, THE TEMPLE OF THE FIRST AMENDMENT

Where are the civil libertarians? Where are the paladins of the ACLU? Where is the outcry and the indignation? Is no one concerned about threats to lynch a gay man for political reasons in the heart of the nation’s capital? Where are the left liberals who have been ostensibly so concerned about civil rights and civil liberties from Nixon to Bush-Cheney? Perhaps they are sleeping, or perhaps they have drunk the Obama Kool-Aid and have become morally insane.

Or perhaps they are so obsessed with the reform of the FISA law and the danger that Bush might be listening in to their telephone calls that they do not notice when a prominent critic of a presidential candidate who is infamously a darling of the establishment media is actually arrested, taken into custody and led away, the target of Gestapo tactics in the National Press Club, the sanctum sanctorum of freedom of speech, freedom of the press, and the First Amendment generally.

Surely the weak sisters who have joined Obama’s fifth column are morally insane when they joke about how Barky’s Myrmidons were able to arrest Sinclair. If the First Amendment does not apply to speech which is not popular with the establishment and the mob, then the First Amendment does not exist at all, for anybody. Any journalist or writer should be able to see that they themselves may be next, now that the US Marshals are serving as the “Fight the Smears” enforcement arm of the Obama campaign. Selective and vindictive prosecution, anyone?

The mere fact that Larry Sinclair had been able to hold such a successful press conference was already a serious defeat for the corrupt and brutal Obama machine.

Read the rest of Tarpley's story HERE.

Just one last quote, about Obama's secrecy....

We have a right to know about their mother, their father, their sister, their brother, their Aunt Tilly, their best friends at all stages of life, their boyfriends, their girlfriends, their pets, their backers, their sponsors, their gurus, their controllers, and their associates of every kind.

More than a right to know these things, we have an imperative duty to find them out.

For they are asking to get their hands on the thermonuclear button, the misuse of which can unleash a thermonuclear fireball that will not respect any aspect of the privacy of ourselves and our family.

Naturally, candidates are free to make their own choices in life just like everybody else: they can choose their religion, their personal associations, their forms of recreation, and all the rest in any way that they like.

But none of this — absolutely nothing — can be claimed as a secret off limits to the attention of the public. All of it must be thoroughly investigated, aired, and published when the presidency is at stake.

Amen to that, brother.

Now, go HERE and read the whole thing.  It's long, but required reading.  Trust me.

Webster G. Tarpley is the author of Obama - The Postmodern Coup: Making of a Manchurian Candidate.

In my entire voting life (which goes back to the 80s), this is the first time I have ever backed someone in the primaries who actually won the Democratic nomination. Winning feels good, but when I lost, even after some hard-fought and bitter contests (Jerry Brown and Howard Dean come to mind), I was able lick my wounds and go forward to support the Democratic nominee.

Losing sucks, but it's part of politics.

So I was pleased to read this piece on Salon.com that helps explain the anger of some Clinton supporters.

1. They are angry because their candidate lost a close contest.

This is just simple human math, and it happens after every primary showdown. Remember that it took some Deaniacs months to come around to John Kerry in 2004. It's just that most years, the contests haven't also been identity-politics duels between two underrepresented social groups vying for a chance at a political position that has always been denied them.

And that is a part of politics, sadly.

Snip

2. They are angry because their historic opportunity is over.

Snip

3. They are angry about rumors that Obama may choose a woman other than Hillary Clinton as his running mate.

This is a tricky one. Maybe some Clinton supporters remain so besotted by the idea of their woman as the history maker that they won't be satisfied unless Clinton or someone from her direct bloodline is the first female to breach the executive branch of government.

I don't 'get' this one. Sebelius or Napalitano would be great VP candidates as they are strong governors and great politicians.And they happen to be women.

But if Obama picks a woman other than Hillary for VP, that would be bad?

4. They are angry that we started to talk about sexism only once Clinton stopped being a threat.

Snip

5. They are angry at the media's repeated denial of sexism, and they are angry at Keith Olbermann.

Snip

6. They are mad at Howard Dean.

Not simply for allowing the massive befouling of the Democratic process that was Michigan and Florida but for addressing issues of sexism only once Clinton was out of the race. Seriously, the anger at Dean may be some of the most unexpected and intense. At the recent EMILY's List conference, during a panel on gender and the election, Dean's name was the only one that got booed.

7. They are mad at Barack Obama.

Snip

But for some, there is lingering sting -- about the paucity of women in Obama's top advisory team during the campaign, about the way they feel the Obama campaign stained Clinton's supporters -- and Clinton and her husband too -- as racists, about the patronizing "You're likable enough" comment during a January debate.

As for the racism charge, well, maybe it's not PC to say this, but I did see some racist attitudes coming out of the mouths of some Clinton supporters. Remember Ferraro saying, "They're only attacking me because I'm white?" Or Harriett Christian's comments about an "inadequate black man?"

I always took the "likable enough" comment in that debate to be a throw-away attempt at humor on Obama's part. It wasn't all that funny, but I never saw it as the terrible jab that many Clinton supporters thought it to be.

8. They are mad at Bill Clinton. Um, obviously.

9. They are mad at Mark Penn.

Snip

10. They are mad at Hillary Clinton for conceding and not taking their fight on to Denver.

11. They are mad that everyone believes them to be old, white and racist. They are mad at the people they thought were supposed to be progressives for treating them badly.

They are mad at their party and its leaders because they feel this race has opened up a door, allowing people to rag on white women -- as irrelevant and buffoonish, as ambitious and preening, as old school and boring and nagging and hectoring -- in a way that demonstrates that women have a questionable place in liberalism and progressivism.

No. Women have a vital place in liberalism and progressivism. Women and liberalism should go hand-in-hand.

But at the same time, some of those angry Clinton people need to understand that many progressives could not support Clinton in the primaries given her vote on the Iraq war. Nor do we think 28 years of two-family rule in the United States would be good for Democracy. Others mistrust the Clintons because of Bill's time in office during which he sold out many progressive ideas. And yes, I understand that Hillary and Bill are not the same person, but if she was running on Bill's record as president, she should have also been held accountable for some of the Clinton administration's failings.

12. And finally, they are angry because they feel they are held hostage by the party by their reproductive organs.

Conclusion?

Yes, they're going to vote for Obama. Of course they'll vote for him. The truth is, they'll probably love voting for him. But after what they feel has been done to them -- the way in which they were written off, marginalized and resented, their hopes mocked and their history-making ambitions dismissed as retrograde identity politicking -- damned if they're going to be nice girls about it.

I hope they come around to Obama. We need them.