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* Obama made 400k per year or more for many years and still had student loans he never paid off for some reason years later. Guess he was not very good at handling money if he could not pay back his student loans making 400k or more a year. I know, he was waiting on someone to forgive his student loans like he wants for students today. He has no personal or business success stories to speak of. Trump, well we dont have enough memory to list all of his accomplishments and successes.
If you're going to make assertions like that, check your facts first!
According to Obama's tax returns going back to 2000, the Obamas (who filed jointly) did not make more than $400,000 in any year until 2005. In 2005, Obama got a big advance on his book, The Audacity of Hope. Obama graduated from Harvard Law in 1991.
Obama paid off his remaining student loans in 2005 due to those book sales and advance.
The average law school student leaves with $80,000 in student loans, and that number is very likely to be higher for a Harvard graduate. For a young family in Chicago making about $200,000 annually it's not at all unusual that they would still be making payments on student loans 14 years later.
Really, this is just another example of a birther conspiracy theory that falls completely apart if you take the slightest amount of time to look at the facts.
We need to produce who we say we re for positions we want. Why not him?
Incorrect, Obama is the only President in history who has publicly disclosed his birth certificate prior to taking office. Disclosing a birth certificate has never been a requirement to be president.
Polarik claims that a zoom-up of the letters contains off-color pixels that do not belong. For example, zooming in shows gray dots in the middle of the black letters. He claims that this means that the letters were replaced.
There are actually many problems here.
First, the highest copy quality (http://cdn.factcheck.org/imagefiles/Ask%20FactCheck%20Images/Obama%20Birth%20Certificate/BO%20Birth%20Certificate.jpg - broken link) of the COLB contains no instances of the word "BIRTH" that looks like this. Every instance has that green thatched background around the letters. In fact, the green thatched background is visible in every copy of the COLB. Thus, Polarik has tampered with the data in order to remove the green thatched background.
Second, along with the missing green from outside the letters, Polarik claims that there should be a green thatched pattern within the letters ("O", "B", etc. have internal areas that should contain green). If you look at the child's name on the big image, you can clearly see the thatch in the letters "C", "O", "B", and "A". However, the green thatch is not as clear as the rest of the image. This happens because the image is at a very low quality: JPEG uses a lossy compression algorithm that drops off low contrast colors and preserves high contrast. The black text on light background is preserved, but the pale green thatch on light green paper blends together when combined with the high-contrast black lettering.
Third, the loss of the green background when scanned is intentional. Security paper, such as the green thatched background, is designed to distort when scanned. That's a security measure. Thus, even if Polarik had not tampered with the image, removing the green from around the letters, the thatch background should not be crisp.
Fourth, the colored pixels within the solid black lettering is fully expected from a scanned document. Scanners are not perfect. They introduce noise into the image. So let's do a scanner test...
The biggest COLB online is 2550x3300 pixels. At 300dpi, that is 8.5"x11" (a full sheet of paper). I scanned in a portion of a Newsweek article at 300dpi. The portion that I selected contains text at various sizes and thicknesses. Looking at the paper version, it all looks uniform and black. However, the scanned image (full color, no enhancements, scanned on an HP Scanjet 3570c) shows that the black text contains a variety of colors.
The areas of text that should be all black are not uniformly black. Combining these "non-black" areas with the JPEG lossy compression (which uses 8x8 blocks) yields square patches that are different dark colors. These look like the exact same artifacts that Polarik claims indicate a forgery. Polarik is wrong -- they are nothing more than scanner artifacts.
On Claim #1, Polarik has manipulated the data, forgot about the purpose of security paper, ignored the image quality, and incorrectly determined that scanner artifacts are signs of a forgery.
Are you going to go "OK, so he was lying or displayed total ignorance of digital image analysis in the first case, but what about this time?"
Please let me know why you used ellipses to skip the part where you would have to acknowledge that Pollard was either lying or completely ignorant about digital image analysis.
However, I guess I do like that "ok, so he was lying or profoundly ignorant the first time, but what about this time?" is pretty much exactly what you do say!
Some relatives of Obama said they were present at his birth outside of the United States, so this issue comes up because of Obama's relatives.
He should go get his long form and end this, but I think he can't, that there really must be something he doesn't want seen on them, why else not show it?
Some relatives of Obama said they were present at his birth outside of the United States, so this issue comes up because of Obama's relatives.
Haven't I already shown you exactly why that's incorrect? Obama's step-grandmother, the person whom birthers claim said that Obama was born in Mombasa, actually said repeatedly that Obama was born in Hawaii while his father was studying in college there.
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He should go get his long form and end this, but I think he can't, that there really must be something he doesn't want seen on them, why else not show it?
Because birthers have already ignored the facts and evidence already available (see InformedConsent's position of "so Polland was lying the first time, but maybe he's not full of crap this time!")?
Because birthers have already put forth about a half dozen backup arguments that will ensure that they will remain completely unconvinced that Obama is ineligible for office no matter what?
Because the dignity of the office of President demands that he not kowtow to the baseless speculation and rumor-mongering of racially-based conspiracy theories?
Because birthers manage to make the entire GOP look bad? Because birthers may have cost Rep. Castle the Republican nomination in the Delaware Senate race, giving an extra seat to Democrats they wouldn't otherwise have?
I saw interviews with his family myself before people got to his relatives, so you are talking political redaction at best.
End the shenanigans and just show the long form or forever be considered someone who had something to hide.
I saw interviews with his family myself before people got to his relatives, so you are talking political redaction at best.
I'd like to know exactly what you think you're talking about there.
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End the shenanigans and just show the long form or forever be considered someone who had something to hide.
Yes, and while we're at it, why didn't Bush personally engage in a point-by-point debate with truthers about why Bush didn't allow 9/11 to take place, or why he didn't make 9/11 take place? That must mean that he had something to hide!
That or he realized that truthers aren't worth it, and that conspiracy theorists like that made the left look bad.
Some relatives of Obama said they were present at his birth outside of the United States, so this issue comes up because of Obama's relatives.
He should go get his long form and end this, but I think he can't, that there really must be something he doesn't want seen on them, why else not show it?
No, Obama's relatives said no such thing. The transcripts have been posted again and again. Don't blame Obama's family for this. It's entirely a birther thing.
I saw interviews with his family myself before people got to his relatives, so you are talking political redaction at best.
End the shenanigans and just show the long form or forever be considered someone who had something to hide.
Where did you see these "interviews"? Why are you the only one making this claim? That shameful "minister" who interviewed Obama's step-grandmother under false pretenses was probably very surprised when Sarah Obama said he was born in Hawaii. He thought he had a sure thing with her.
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