Thursday, July 30, 2009

Obama: Illegal President?





Generally, the main reason that a conspiracy theory exists is that it's difficult to disprove. So you may think it strange that this year's big one has been able to survive. I'm talking about the notion that Barack Obama was not really born in the United States and that there has been a conspiracy to cover that up. Obviously, if he wasn't born in this country, then he couldn't legally be President. Even though this has been disproved over and over again, that hasn't stopped a small but vocal minority from passionately buying into it. This week, Congress took time out from avoiding the health care issue, and declared that Obama was, indeed, born in the United States. I'm sure this won't be enough to satisfy the birth doubters. These people are out there. They probably don't just believe that there was a conspiracy to kill Michael Jackson so that his music would sell more CDs; they believe there was a conspiracy to kill Walter Cronkite so his music would sell more CDs.

The President has provided a copy of his birth certificate indicating that he was born in Hawaii. The conspiracy folks responded, "Yeah, but it's just a copy." Well, who has the original of their birth certificate? Almost a year ago, Hawaii's state health director, Dr.Chiyome Fukino, and the registrar of vital statistics, Alvin Onaka, personally verified that Hawaii's health department has Obama's original birth certificate as it should.

Remember the acrimonious Democratic primary? If the Clintons thought this story had been even the least bit credible, don't you think they would have brought it up? And then there was the general election. Are we to believe that John McCain and Sarah Palin were also part of the grand conspiracy to conceal where Obama was really born?

And yet, some TV and radio talkers, along with a handful of Republican officials have kept this thing alive. So finally, when Congress passed a resolution ostensibly celebrating the 50th anniversary of Hawaii becoming the 50th state, there was a clause in there that read, "Whereas the 44th President of the United States, Barack Obama was born in Hawaii on August 4, 1961." It was passed unanimously, but that doesn't mean this thing is over.

It probably won't be over until everyone in the world believes that we really sent astronauts to the moon, and the whole thing was not staged on a movie lot. It will be over when nobody believes that people met with extraterrestrials in Roswell, New Mexico. It may not even be over until nobody believes that John Dillinger's penis is in the Smithsonian, but they aren't allowed to show it to anyone.

In other words, this ridiculous story has become part of urban legend. However, there is an ugly side to it. There has been so much anger, so much venom behind this contention that I can't help thinking that hatred and intolerance are involved. It seems that those who just cannot accept that an African American is their President have to find reasons to reject his legitimate right to have that position. They can't believe that someone other than a white guy was elected President, so they conclude that he must have cheated.

It would have been nice if more Republicans hadn't been just passive about this. It would have served them – and us – well if they had stepped up and said, "Let's end this nonsense now. We have more important things to deal with. Of course, Obama was born in the United States." It's like during the campaign when John McCain famously told that woman at the town meeting that Barack Obama was not a Muslim. Maybe it wasn't the best thing for him to do politically, but it was the right thing to do.

While we're on the subject of conspiracy theories and Obama, here's a message to those who see a plot wherever they look: the "beer summit" involving Henry Louis Gates, Police Sergeant James Crowley, and the President was not secretly put together by Budweiser to increase beer sales. Of course, I can't prove that.




14 comments:

  1. You are such a liberal Obama koolaid drinker. He never produced a real birth certificate, not even a copy of one. The "short form" he showed is not valid, even in Hawaii, for anything government related. All he has to do is show the "long form", even a copy, and this would go away.

    Instead he spends hundreds of thousands of dollars fighting every legal challenge to produce this form. Why? What does he have to hide? If he really was born in the US, produce the form and be done with it. The more he fights against showing it, the more we think he really does have something to hide.

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  2. OK. You're a wingnut and proud of it. But just for the hell of it, enter the factual realm for a moment and offer prooof that Obama has spent ONE thousand dollars "...fighting every legal challenge to produce [his birth certificate.]"

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  3. Lloyd,

    As always, good post--thoughtful and well-written.

    Michael W,

    Take off your tinfoil hat and go home. Somewhere, a bridge is missing its troll.

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  4. The time lines, places, actions, motives, when analyzed, support, and are consistent with, what is the answer to the Obama birth puzzle:

    Obama’s grandmother is his mother and his mother is his sister.

    Think about it. Review all the facts and claims.

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  5. HEY SO GLAD YOU POINTED THIS PORTION OUT:
    "Remember the acrimonious Democratic primary? If the Clintons thought this story had been even the least bit credible, don't you think they would have brought it up? And then there was the general election. Are we to believe that John McCain and Sarah Palin were also part of the grand conspiracy to conceal where Obama was really born?" END QUOTE IT ANSWERS THE VERY THOUGHT I WAS THINKING BACK BEFORE ELECTIONS.

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  6. I didn't know birthers could read. Well thought out and well written article. And a very true article. It's not about his place of birth, it's about his race.

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  7. I'm not sure it is correct that having been born outside of the U.S. would necessarily disqualify Obama from holding the office of President. I suspect, for example, that, if an American woman happened to give birth while on vacation overseas, the child would be considered a natural born citizen of the U.S. However, the main reason the "birther" hypothesis won't die is that, for no obvious reason, Obama has refused to instruct the vital records officials in Hawaii to make his original birth certificate and any realated documents available for review. The form he has on line is an 11/01 revision, so it could not have been made any time near his birth. (I believe I read that a date stamp on the back indicates the form was filled out in the last couple years or so.) I also noticed, at least in heir last pronouncement, the Hawaiian official did not say she looked at an original birth certificate, but said she had looked at the official "records" of the birth or something like that. It may be that the original was somehow lost and the duplicate birth record is based on some other documentation, sworn statements from the grandparents or something else. If that is the case, Obama ought just to acknowledge it, rather than covering up. On the other hand, if the original birth certificate exists, there is no good reason for not letting people see it for themselves.

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  8. It just proves assholes are everywhere. Move along, nothing to see here.

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  9. ITS ROSWELL, NOT ROCKWELL DOUSCHEBAG

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  10. Thanks for pointing out my mistake in such a constructive, mature manner.


    Lloyd

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  11. A few quotes to educate Paul VZ:

    "FactCheck.org staffers have now seen, touched, examined and photographed the original birth certificate. We conclude that irt meets all of the requirements from the State Department for proving U.S. citizenship. Claims that the document lacks a raised seal or a signature are false. We have posted high-resolution photographs of the document as "supporting documents" to this article."

    "Update, Nov 1: The Assocoated Press quoted Chiyome Fukino as saying thqat both she and the registrar of vital statistics, Alvin Onaka, have personally verified that the health department holds Obama's original birth certificate."

    "Fukino said she has 'personally seen and verified that the Hawaii State Department of Health has Sen. Obama's original birth certificate on record in accordance with state policies and procedures.'"

    http://www.factcheck.org/elections-2008/born_in_the_usa.html

    So...Persons, other than the Obama team have actually physically examined the original birth certificicate and have confirmed that it is real and accurate.

    In order for Obama to have been elected via a conspiracy, it would require the cooperation of not only high-level Democrats, but also high-level Republicans, as well as the media and many, many others. It's hard enough to get a family to agree on who gets the last slice of pizza, so getting that many people to agree to put a non-citizen in the White House is a huge stretch of the imagination.

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  12. Well, it does seem funny that the House of Representatives felt the need to do an investigation of John McCain and his legality to run for President, but nothing for Obama. Of course, McCain is white and Republican, so I guess they felt they couldn't trust him. While Obama is black and Democrat, so of course he could be trusted.

    I am really sick of the whole race thing by the way. I could have cared less who was what race anyway. I served in the U.S. Navy for 9 years, served with white folk, black folk, brown folk, whatever. You learned quickly that the only thing that mattered was trusting your life to the guy next to you based on his character and skills. Color be dammed. I've kept in touch with a bunch of friends made then, they have one thing in common, they were people I could trust and still do. Race had and has nothing to do with it. A trustworthy man or woman is that no matter what they look like.

    But it seems like whenever anyone speaks out against anything Obama says or does or fails to do, why then you are racist. That's crap. Ask my several very black co-workers who can't stand Obama either. Has nothing to do with race, well maybe a little with them as they are ashamed that he allowed the race card to played, but even more so they are pissed off at all the shallow whites who played the race card for him with such enthusiasm. They remember a very great man who said he envisioned a country where a man was judged by his content of his character, not the color of his skin. Didn't seem to happen this election since we didn't learn much of anything about the man except hope and change. Well, we don't see a lot of hope, but we sure see a lot of change, and most of it is not change for the better. Whatever happened to all the "openness" and "transparency"? 300 pages added to the stimulus bill, now relabeled as the recovery bill, at 3am the day before the vote. Real open and transparent, sure.

    By the way, I wouldn't believe a thing FactCheck.org said, they have proven their bias again and again.

    So I say to you all, take off your own tinfoil hats and really look at what's happening, I mean really look, and see if you really like where things are going. This White House even wants us to spy on each other by sending emails with questionable statements about the health care reform to them. What? Are you kidding me? Isn't that how the Nazi's and Communist's started? Get the people to spy on each other? I noticed the White House didn't say just what they were going to do with the information except "keep track of them". But don't believe me, go read it on the White House blog, www.whitehouse.gov/blog/Facts-Are-Stubborn-Things/

    And then ask yourself, do you really want the government to act like this against the people of America? Those same people who the government is supposed to be "of the people, by the people and for the people"?

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  13. and oh yeah, anonymous, attack me but don't have the courage to give your name. I'm really hurt by that, really. lol I see you really have the convictions of your stand, but then I finding out that free speech to a liberal means that I'm free to agree with you, but not to dissent. Unlike most conservatives like me. I will follow the paraphrase of Voltaire, "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it" It is part of what America is all about, and part of the Constitution that I spent those earlier years of my life defending.

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