Obamageddon - 2012

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The Obama Deception
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Fiscal ruin of the Western world beckons
For a glimpse of what awaits Britain, Europe, and America as budget deficits spiral to war-time levels, look at what is happening to the Irish welfare state.
By Ambrose Evans-Pritchard
Published: 5:40PM BST 18 Jul 2009

Events have already forced Premier Brian Cowen to carry out the harshest assault yet seen on the public services of a modern Western state. He has passed two emergency budgets to stop the deficit soaring to 15pc of GDP. They have not been enough. The expert An Bord Snip report said last week that Dublin must cut deeper, or risk a disastrous debt compound trap.

A further 17,000 state jobs must go (equal to 1.25m in the US), though unemployment is already 12pc and heading for 16pc next year.

Education must be cut 8pc. Scores of rural schools must close, and 6,900 teachers must go. "The attacks outlined in this report would represent an education disaster and light a short fuse on a social timebomb", said the Teachers Union of Ireland.

Nobody is spared. Social welfare payments must be cut 5pc, child benefit by 20pc. The Garda (police), already smarting from a 7pc pay cut, may have to buy their own uniforms. Hospital visits could cost £107 a day, etc, etc.

"Something has to give," said Professor Colm McCarthy, the report's author. "We're borrowing €400m (£345m) a week at a penalty interest."

No doubt Ireland has been the victim of a savagely tight monetary policy e_SEmD given its specific needs. But the deeper truth is that Britain, Spain, France, Germany, Italy, the US, and Japan are in varying states of fiscal ruin, and those tipping into demographic decline (unlike young Ireland) have an underlying cancer that is even more deadly. The West cannot support its gold-plated state structures from an aging workforce and depleted tax base.

As the International Monetary Fund made clear last week, Britain is lucky that markets have not yet imposed a "penalty interest" on British Gilts, given the trajectory of UK national debt – now vaulting towards 100pc of GDP – and the scandalous refusal of this Government to map out any path back to solvency.

"The UK has been getting the benefit of the doubt, both in the Government bond market and also the foreign exchange market. This benefit of the doubt is not going to last forever," said the Fund.

France and Italy have been less abject, but they began with higher borrowing needs. Italy's debt is expected to reach the danger level of 120pc next year, according to leaked Treasury documents. France's debt will near 90pc next year if President Nicolas Sarkozy goes ahead with his "Grand Emprunt", a fiscal blitz masquerading as investment.

There was a case for an emergency boost last winter to cushion the blow as global industry crashed. That moment has passed. While I agree with Nomura's Richard Koo that the US, Britain, and Europe risk a deflationary slump along the lines of Japan's Lost Decade (two decades really), I am ever more wary of his calls for Keynesian spending a l'outrance.

Such policies have crippled Japan. A string of make-work stimulus plans e_SEmD famously building bridges to nowhere in Hokkaido e_SEmD has ensured that the day of reckoning will be worse, when it comes. The IMF says Japan's gross public debt will reach 240pc of GDP by 2014 e_SEmD beyond the point of recovery for a nation with a contracting workforce. Sooner or later, Japan's bond market will blow up.

Error One was to permit a bubble in the 1980s. Error Two was to wait a decade before opting for monetary "shock and awe" through quantitative easing.

The US Federal Reserve has moved faster but already seems to think the job is done. "Quantitative tightening" has begun. Its balance sheet has contracted by almost $200bn (£122bn) from the peak. The M2 money supply has stagnated since January. The Fed is talking of "exit strategies".

Is this a replay of mid-2008 when the Fed lost its nerve, bristling over criticism that it had cut rates too low (then 2pc)? Remember what happened. Fed hawks in Dallas, St Louis, and Atlanta talked of rate rises. That had consequences. Markets tightened in anticipation, and arguably triggered the collapse of Lehman Brothers, AIG, Fannie and Freddie that Autumn.

The Fed's doctrine – New Keynesian Synthesis – has let it down time and again in this long saga, and there is scant evidence that Fed officials recognise the fact. As for the European Central Bank, it has let private loan growth contract this summer.

The imperative for the debt-bloated West is to cut spending systematically for year after year, off-setting the deflationary effect with monetary stimulus. This is the only mix that can save us.

My awful fear is that we will do exactly the opposite, incubating yet another crisis this autumn, to which we will respond with yet further spending. This is the road to ruin.

 

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Many Predict US Financial Collapse in September
July 18, 2009

Let us contemplate the day in the near future when the consequences of financial chicanery finally outpace the ability of the governments, central banks and big media to cover up and obfuscate the truth. Many respected voices have now gone on record that September 30 or thereabouts will be that day.

Bob Chapman [Internationalforecaster.com] revealed that the US State Dept has advised embassies worldwide to stock up on a year's worth of the local currency in anticipation of collapse of the US dollar. Look for a temporary banking shutdown timed for around September 2009. As under Roosevelt, some banks won't reopen. 96% of bank reserves are currently held with the Federal Reserve who tells the banks not to loan the money, but rather to save it for further banking acquisition and consolidation. Chapman foresees a bank holiday lasting 4-5 days. Chapman thinks this first bank holiday presages a much more significant bank holiday months to years later which will involve simultaneous devaluations of multiple currencies as well as other significant changes in the banking system.

Harry Shultz [as quoted in marketwatch.com] says "Some U.S. embassies worldwide are being advised to purchase massive amounts of local currencies; enough to last them a year. Some embassies are being sent enormous amounts of U.S. cash to purchase currencies from those governments, quietly. But not pound sterling. Inside the State Dept., there is a sense of sadness and foreboding that 'something' is about to happen ... within 180 days, but could be 120-150 days."

Benjamin Fulford [benjaminfulford.typepad.com/benjaminfulford] states that for almost a century the US Treasury Dept has been issuing specialized debt instruments to countries with which the US has had a trade surplus. These complex debt instruments are tailored by complex treaties. Unfortunately, the recent US Treasury funding needs exceed the willingness of these creditor nations to extend additional credit. Fulford writes, "The problem is that after nearly a century of issuing these debt instruments, the chickens are coming home to roost. President Obama tried at the recent G8 plus 5 meeting in Italy to borrow more money than George Bush junior did in 8 years. He was told a resounding no. The result should be total economic chaos in the U.S. by September 30th . "

Jim Willie [goldenjackass.com] writes of an Asian led initiative ending dollar hegemony beginning this weekend. Willie suspects that the Fed/Treasury is covertly loaning foreign central banks the money with which the central banks are now using to buy US debt. Increasingly, US debt is being bought by foreign central banks taking up the slack of investors abandoning US Treasury debt. Willie confirms Chapman's comments and says he solicited and received "multiple confirmations." He adds, "CHAOS WILL PREVAIL WITHIN SEVERAL MONTHS, PERHAPS A YEAR AT MOST{his emphasis}."

Jim Sinclair [jsmineset.com] has recently visited China meeting with its leaders. He states that China is increasingly more willing to take on the United States in its apparent maneuvers to inflate its way out of its debt crisis. In early July Sinclair started a 120 day countdown till breakdown of the US dollar ends market manipulation and all those sour economic chickens come home to roost.

OUT OF TRICKS

Seemingly the Federal Reserve/US Treasury have exhausted their bag of tricks. The Fed is fighting rising interest rates, a difficult task given the hyperinflationary debt financing it is now doing. Once rising pressure on interest rates become too much for the Fed to control, there will probably be several sudden economic and financial surprises cascading with currently known dilemmas: crashing dollar; increasing home mortgage defaults; commercial mortgage defaults reaching critical mass; falling bond and stock markets extending insolvency of pension funds; defaults on debt by state and local governments. And don't forget derivatives and further exposure of corruption and criminality on Wall Street. Bernie Madoff may soon have lots of company.

Unable to produce any more financial wizardry, the cynical federal government is arrayed in full battle dress uniform: 1] Mass forced swine flu vaccinations scheduled this fall performed under the specter of martial law; 2] Rumblings of extending the wars in Asia into Iran and Pakistan; 3] Rekindling the Korean conflict may also be in the cards. Of course, don't forget that both Iran and North Korea are client states of the British World Order. All the recent saber rattling involving Iran and North Korea is wholly orchestrated. We need the distractions from the economic crisis, so our clients Ahmadinejad and Kim provide us with the necessary theater. So what will come first, further banner headlines of dollar collapse and market crashes or the distracting theater of more war or 911 type events?

What will this fall really bring? It is not too far away so we shall soon know. Unfortunately, it may make last fall look pretty tame. When the government answers economic distress by preparing for the worst, then the worst may very well be what happens.

 

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President Obama's Public Approval Ratings Plunging...

 

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Obama Is Not Legally Eligible To Be President Of USA?

 

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Obamageddon - It's Really About The
Final Push For World Government,
And The New World Order.

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Bailouts could cost U.S. $23 trillion
By EAMON JAVERS | 7/20/09 3:19 PM EDT

Barack Obama's Treasury Department says less than $2 trillion has been spent so far on bailouts. Photo: AP


In his prepared remarks, Barofsky writes: “Since the onset of the financial crisis in 2007, the Federal Government, through many agencies, has implemented dozens of programs that are broadly designed to support the economy and financial system. The total potential Federal Government support could reach up to $23.7 trillion.”

The comment comes in the context of a quarterly report to Congress by the special inspector general. Barofsky will testify Tuesday before the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. The office of the special inspector general was created to serve as an auditor of the federal bailout by the same legislation that launched the TARP program itself.

Originally, TARP was intended, Barofsky writes, to facilitate “the purchase, management, and sale of up to $700 billion of “toxic” assets, primarily troubled mortgages and mortgage-backed securities.”

But that plan was soon rejected, and the TARP instead became a grab bag of bailout initiatives, including bailouts for GM, Chrysler and auto parts suppliers as the federal government struggled in real time to contain a spiraling economic disaster.

Barofsky reports that TARP has come to include 12 separate programs that include a total of as much as $3 trillion, “including TARP funds, loans and guarantees from other agencies, and private money.” Of the initial $700 billion allocated by Congress, Barofsky found that the Treasury has so far announced how $643.1 billion will be spent, and it has actually spent $441 billion as of June 30.

Barofsky’s calculation of a $23 trillion figure took into account a wide-ranging group of federal programs set up by disparate agencies within the federal bureaucracy.

The special inspector general counted approximately 50 initiatives or programs launched since 2007 to fight the economic collapse.

The Federal Reserve, he found, has increased its balance sheet from $900 billion to more than $2 trillion, and Barofsky estimated that the total amount of support to the economy by the fed is at least $6.8 trillion, because it is exposed to significant losses if many of the assets guaranteed by the Fed deteriorate in value.

The FDIC, Barofsky writes, has contributed $2 trillion in “new gross potential support.”

The Federal Housing Finance Agency – “under whose auspices fall the Government Sponsored Enterprises such as Fannie Mae [and] Freddie Mac,” – has effectively provided more than $6 trillion in gross potential support.

Treasury itself, Barofsky concludes, has contributed nearly $4 trillion of potential support to the economy beyond the TARP program itself.

And Barofsky points out the at the non-TARP programs, which are far larger than the TARP itself, do not come with the strings that the high-profile TARP money itself comes with, including executive compensation, and they don’t necessarily require congressional approval. And beyond the ability to tally their costs, Barofsky has no authority as an auditor over the non-TARP programs.

The hearing before the House Oversight Committee will be held at 10:00 a.m. Tuesday in room 2154 Rayburn House Office Building.

Abby Phillip contributed to this story.

 

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Obama Is Not Legally Eligible To Be President Of USA?

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Talk Shows, Press Begin Covering Eligibility
Submitted by Phil on Sun, Jul 19, 2009

One might think that the proverbial Pandora’s Box has been opened — it appears that more and more talk shows and press outlets are taking on the presidential eligibility issue — and in earnest.

Most recently, the Columbus, Georgia-based Ledger-Enquirer had run with the story of Major Cook. In fact, this has been such a major story for the paper that they recently wrote about their internal experiences with the issue, including the following stats:

* The Cook v. Good story produced the most traffic of any story ever in the history of the local paper
* More than 1,000 comments from readers were produced, including (unfortunately) a number of threats against the newspaper
* The paper received almost 500,000 unique hits (readers who had never previously accessed the paper)
o A prominent spot on The Drudge Report was responsible for 84% of this new traffic
* The paper received 712,251 page views, 7 times their normal volume
* The reporter herself received hundreds of emails once the story broke
* At the Courthouse, a number of public safety agencies were involved to make sure the grounds were secure, including assets from the following areas:
o Columbus Police Department
o Phenix City Police Department
o Muscogee County Sheriff’s Office
o Columbus Fire and Emergency Medical Services
o US Marshall’s Office

One of the major papers in Georgia, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, also picked this story up, and one of their bloggers wasted no time in expressing his disdain towards the eligibility question.

A reporter from Sonoran News out of Cave Creek, Arizona has recently run some notable stories on this issue, such as “Ghana apparently didn’t get the memo” (with quite the honorable mention to my bodaciously kewl web site — many thanks for that!) and “Allen v. Soetoro assured standing in FOIA claim.”

Tomorrow, Charles Kerchner, lead Plaintiff in the currently pending case Kerchner v. Obama, will have his newest advertorial printed in The Washington Times Weekly Edition

 

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President Obama's Public Approval Ratings Plunging...

For First Time, Obama's Approval Rating Falls <blink>Below 50%</blink>

 

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Obama Economic Recovery Plan Doomed
- Vice President Joe Biden Admission
by Gerald Celente
Global Research, July 9, 2009

KINGSTON, NY -- Vice President Joseph Biden's admission that the Obama Administration's economic recovery plan was predicated on egregiously inaccurate forecasts consigns the entire effort to failure, predicts Gerald Celente.

"The plan is based upon false premises," said Celente, Director of The Trends Research Institute, referring to White House projections used to sell the stimulus package to the nation. To make their case, Washington warned that without the Obama stimulus, unemployment, then at 7.2 percent, would rise above 8 percent in 2009 and peak at 9 percent in 2010.

Yet, only midway through 2009, the unemployment rate is already 9.5 percent and rising. "This is an enormous miscalculation," contends Celente. "In real world terms, it means that 2.5 million more Americans than anticipated have lost their jobs. The inaccuracy of the forecast undermines the validity not only of the plan, but also of the planners."

Joe Biden sidestepped blame, pleading "guilty with an explanation." Weaseled Biden, "The truth is, we and everyone else misread the economy."

NO! "Everyone else" did not "misread the economy." The Trends Research Institute read it correctly, and has been reading it correctly for decades.

"How often does the government have to be wrong, and how wrong do they have to be before people and the media stop taking them seriously?" wondered Celente. "The first spending package didn't deliver as promised, and now Obama's advisors want another stimulus, as if doubling up on failure will achieve success."

"If we made forecasts as inaccurate as the Obama team's and implemented similarly unsuccessful plans, and then tried to salvage the situation by repeating exactly the same mistakes, we'd have been laughed out of business long ago," Celente said.

Celente contends there are but three possible explanations for President Obama and his "brilliant" team of economic advisors "misreading how bad the economy was":

1. They're ignorant, despite PhD's and impressive resumes. 2. They are so arrogant they are incapable of acknowledging that anyone outside the incestuous Beltway circle could possibly get it right ... when they've got it wrong. 3. They actually do know better, but are lying.

"None of these suffice as excuses," concluded Celente, "but the inability or unwillingness to make accurate forecasts appears to be a Vice Presidential prerequisite." This past January, departing VP Dick Cheney sloughed off his administration's central role in accelerating the financial crisis and failure to head it off, claiming, "Nobody anywhere was smart enough to figure it out."

Anyone in the media interested in interviewing one person who was "smart enough to figure it out" should talk to Gerald Celente.

The Greatest Depression is at hand. The stimulus, bailout and buyout packages being forced on the nation by an Administration that "misread how bad the economy was" will only lead to "Obamageddon": The Fall of Empire America.


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ECONOMY: Why Obama’s Economic Policies Are Failing
Prof. Peter Morici
Robert H. Smith School of Business at University of Maryland- 7/14/2009

The $789 billion stimulus doesn’t fix what ails the economy and is doomed to fail. Since 2007, the private sector has shed 6.6 million jobs—half in manufacturing and construction. Governments added 185 thousand employees, hired teachers, and no change in those trends can be detected since the stimulus began.

During the economic boom, a huge structural international trade deficit emerged. Imports exceeded exports by about $700 billion annually from 2005 to 2008. By the end of the boom, nearly all was manufactured goods from China and oil.

The failure to pay for imported consumer goods and gasoline with exports creates a huge shortage of demand for U.S.-made products. Money spent on imports that does not return as payment for exports can’t be spent on U.S. made products. Inventories pile up and layoffs result.

Americans solved that problem, temporarily, by borrowing against homes, cars and credit cards to spend more than they earned. Banks got the cash from China and Middle East oil exporters, stuck with dollars from selling to Americans but not buying U.S. exports.

A bubble resulted in home construction, housing prices and stocks that inevitably burst.

Voila, the Great Recession.

To lift the economy, President Obama must resurrect manufacturing, which requires exporting more and importing less, and shift idle construction workers from housing, which is in oversupply, to rebuilding schools, roads, hospitals, and factories.

Of the $789 billion stimulus, only about $100 billion is infrastructure. About $280 billion is tax cuts for individuals and businesses who are too scared to spend. The remaining, $400 billion mostly rewards Democratic Party constituencies—for example, huge increases in the Department of Education budget and grants to state and local governments are not laying off teachers and policemen as President Obama often asserts.

Cap and trade will only make matters worse—economically and environmentally. It will raise the cost of manufacturing in the United States and send jobs to China, where CO2 emissions are unregulated and higher.

Proposed changes in health care would increase the cost of insurance to businesses instead of lowering prices for drugs, doctor’s visits and malpractice insurance, as true reform would accomplish. That may reward yet other Democratic Party constituencies but it will further disadvantage Americans competing in global markets.

Real alternatives are available to failed Bush-era policies.

Recalibrate trade policy to promote exports, balance trade with China and develop domestic oil and gas. Abandon cap and trade until China and India sign on to the same disciplines, require drug companies and doctors to charge no more than they are paid in Canada, and find honest work for malpractice lawyers.

All would require Mr. Obama to think outside the box and abandon the conventional wisdom of the left.

Just as President Bush’s blind adherence to conservative ideology threw America into crisis, Obama must unshackle his policies from liberal group think to succeed.

 

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U.S.A. National Debt Clock

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U.S. debt from 1940 to 2008. Red lines indicate the public debt and black lines indicate the gross debt, the difference being that the gross debt includes funds held by the government (e.g. the Social Security Trust Fund). The second chart shows debt as a percentage of U.S. GDP or dollar value of economic production per year. Data from U.S. Budget historical tables at whitehouse.gov/omb and other tables listed when you click on the figure.

 

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Major Foreign Holders of United States Treasury Securities



Do you see what I see?

 

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Hyperinflation Nation (USA)

Part 1
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Part 2
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Part 3
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Get ready for banking's next headache

A weak economy and frozen financing markets could spell trouble for regional banks with big commercial loan portfolios.

By Colin Barr, senior writer
Last Updated: July 27, 2009: 9:20 AM ET

Fed chief Ben Bernanke said he is watching commercial real estate trends.

NEW YORK (Fortune) -- Regional banks can no longer ignore the elephant in the room -- their exposure to the <blink>commercial real estate bust</blink>.

Though housing markets remain weak, analysts expect credit problems over the next year to center on commercial real estate -- mortgages on office and apartment buildings and shopping malls, as well as construction, development and industrial loans.

U.S. banks hold some $1.8 trillion worth of commercial loans, according to Federal Reserve data. Big regional banks, including PNC (PNC, Fortune 500) of Pittsburgh, KeyCorp (KEY, Fortune 500) of Cleveland and BB&T (BBT, Fortune 500) of Richmond, Va., have more than half their loan books in commercial loans.

With financing markets locked up and the economy still mired in recession -- unemployment is at a 26-year high while capacity utilization, a key measure of industrial production, recently hit a record low -- observers fear a wave of loans will go bad in coming quarters.

"The problems facing commercial real estate are severe and will likely take many years to resolve," Deutsche Bank analyst Richard Parkus told the Joint Economic Committee of Congress this month. He said the biggest losses are likely to come from banks' $550 billion of construction loans, such as loans to homebuilders.

Banks are already bracing for impact. Higher credit costs led to second-quarter losses at banks ranging from Atlanta's SunTrust (STI, Fortune 500) to Delaware's Wilmington Trust (WT). Zions Bancorp (ZION), which operates primarily in Utah, California, Texas and Nevada, was among those forecasting deeper losses on problem commercial real estate loans.

"It is still a pretty crummy economy out there and we are seeing deterioration in all of it," Zions Bancorp chief financial officer Doyle Arnold said in a conference call with analysts and investors.

Accordingly, banks have been adding to their reserves for future credit losses. But with more borrowers falling behind on their loans, it's not clear that these so-called reserve builds will be enough.

SunTrust, for instance, added $161 million in the latest quarter to its loan loss reserve, citing continuing housing market deterioration and "increasing economic stress in the commercial market."

But nonperforming assets rose even more, jumping to 4.48% of total loans from 2.09% a year earlier. As a result, the bank's loan loss reserve tumbled to 53% of nonperforming assets from 70% a year earlier. Investors like to see a number nearer 100%. BB&T, for instance, has 101% coverage.

Thin reserves mean SunTrust "may face material provisions ahead," according to a report from analysts at research firm CreditSights. That could take a toll on profits over the next year.

Similar trends are playing out at Comerica (CMA), whose loan loss reserve has fallen to 78% of nonperforming loans from 91% a year ago, and Zions, which fell to 65% from 79%.

The increase in nonperforming assets comes as some real estate players complain that banks are sitting on bad loans rather than liquidating them -- a trend they claim is suppressing new lending and compounding the problems in a falling market.

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"The rate at which these troubled loans are being resolved has been sluggish," James Helsel, treasurer of the National Association of Realtors, told the Joint Economic Committee July 10. "Over $60 billion in assets have become distressed this year but only $4 billion worth of commercial loans have been resolved so far."

Though the banking industry succeeded in raising tens of billions of dollars in new equity in the second quarter, some expect the financing picture to remain cloudy, adding to price declines.

Office rental rates have fallen 23% in New York and 11% in Washington from their 2008 highs, commercial property manager Jones Lang LaSalle said in its monthly market perspective newsletter this month. Meanwhile, office vacancy rates jumped to 14% in Manhattan and 11% in Washington in the first quarter, reflecting the economic slump.

"Debt will remain constricted as banks continue to adopt the 'delay and pray' approach to their real estate holdings, extending loan terms in the hope that better economic conditions will obviate the need to foreclose," Jones Lang LaSalle said in its report.

For their part, bankers blame the problems on weak loan demand and deny they're kicking the can down the line on troubled credits.

"We are managing these problem loans effectively," Comerica chief executive officer Ralph Babb said in the bank's second quarter earnings statement.

Still, the banks have underestimated their problems before. Comerica forecast in January that this year's credit-related charge-offs, or writedowns of uncollectible loans, would be in line with last year's level of $472 million.

But the bank said last week that charge-offs were $405 million in the first half alone, with even "modest" improvement not expected until the fourth quarter.

 

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Anti-Obama 'birther movement' gathers steam
Conspiracy theory returns with a vengeance as right wing questions Barack Obama's US citizenship
Chris McGreal in Washington
guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 28 July 2009 18.42 BST

Barack Obama speaks at the White House. Photograph: Mark Wilson/Getty

It's not because the president is black, of course.

It's because those upstanding Americans who cheered as Barack Obama's predecessor rode roughshod over the constitution in his war on terror have found a new enthusiasm for a strict adherence to the US's supreme law. Specifically they're interested in a clause requiring the president to be born a natural born citizen (although that doesn't mean to say they're not still worried about Obama also being a secret Muslim).

A long brewing conspiracy theory has it that Barack Obama entered this world as a subject of the British crown in East Africa because his father was Kenyan. A Hawaii birth certificate and birth notices in the Honolulu press went some way to dampen down the feverish speculation when it first emerged during Obama's election campaign, driven by a handful of rightwingers who helped scupper John Kerry's bid for president.

But now the issue has returned with a vengeance driven in part by a high profile CNN presenter, rightwing talk radio and a video of a woman haranguing her Republican member of congress prompting her supporters to recite the Pledge of Allegiance. Now members of congress are sponsoring a bill to require all future presidential candidates to show their birth certificates.

At the heart of the supposed conspiracy is Obama's failure to produce a paper version of his birth certificate because Hawaii digitalised its original records some years ago and now provides a print out of the electronic record. That print out shows he was born in Honolulu in 1961, a fact that was verified again today by the state's health director, Dr Chiyome Fukino. He said: "I ... have seen the original vital records maintained on file by the Hawaii State Department of Health verifying Barack Hussein Obama was born in Hawaii and is a natural-born American citizen."

...(Click Here For More)...

 

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He’s not the Obama who was elected
30 July, 2009, 19:06

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[annexa]

A little over a third of Americans strongly disapprove of President Barack Obama's policies, according to one of the most prominent public opinion polls.

33%! How familiar!