Does Historical Coincidence Unravel Obama’s Legitimacy? [Birther]

In themselves, they prove nothing, one way or the other

That's the point! Trump and other Birthers wish to explain the existence of the newspaper announcements away as the grandmother laying the groundwork to fraudulently claim that Barry was born in the United States. How are these in anyway legally admissible as proof of birth in Hawaii? In and of themselves, they are not, therefore, the grandother would have been wasting her time in even attempting to do this. However, combined with the state-issued COLB, they do confirm that a child was born to a Mr. and Mrs. Barack Obama, who resided in the state of Hawaii at the time of birth. Given that there is no record of his mother traveling outside the country during this time period, we have stacks of evidence in the "Born in Hawaii" column and nothing in the "Born Anywhere Else" column.

This is one of those unending merry-go-round conversations that populate the outer regions of the Twilight Zone. Let me try again.

First, theory-building doesn’t require absolute proof to be useful. All it requires is that the framework devised accounts at least as well for the accepted data as any other framework.

Therefore, please realize that the Grandma Fraud theory is only a framework to be tested like any other framework for its explanatory power. If it explains the known data at least as well as any other theory, and it cannot be eliminated by some rule of logical exclusion, then it must remain at the table as a possibility, as the motive for fraud was arguably there.

Now, what you have done, and you have finally made it clear for me, is that you think the eligibility skeptics think that Grandma was trying to artificially generate the newspaper announcements as legal proof of birth location. I know of no eligibility skeptic who has made that assertion. Your attack at that point is spurious, a strawman. The theory as normally propounded states that Grandma sought to prove birth location by asserting the birth in a sworn affidavit to the hospitals. The newspaper announcements, under that theory, are no more than a predictable side-effect, but not at all the primary result intended. Therefore, your missile misses the mark, because you do not understand how eligibility skeptics are approaching this data. Understandable, but you do need to address the actual theory or theories espoused, not your incorrectly imagined version of said theories.

Second, you attempt to have it both ways. If eligibility skeptics posit Grandma using the announcements in any way to prove birth location (and they don’t - that is just your misconception of their theory), you say the announcements have no legal effect, but if the anti-birthers use the announcements to “confirm” birth location in Hawaii, suddenly you say they have effect. That is a raw double standard, and a good judge would take you down for that in about a nanosecond. You can’t have it both ways. If they’re worthless for Grandma, they’re worthless for BOR and you too. If they’re “confirmatory” for you, they’re “confirmatory” for Grandma. But I digress into the absurdly hypothetical, because I don’t know any real eligibility skeptics who follow your version of the theory.

Third, I agree with you that the location of his mother during August 1961 is of interest to the problem. But as I am sure you are aware, an argument from silence is muted at best. To eliminate the possibility of fraud, you would need that which excluded the possibility that she was out of country at the time of the birth. Do you have any affirmative evidence of the same? When I am doing discovery, if I am asserting that an event occurred, I have to nail down affirmative evidence of the event during the relevant time period. Hearsay is no good, but I can use business records like bank statements, school bills, hospital records, and such.

Stanley Durham’s records for the relevant period are not available anywhere that I know of. No one has produced anything, other than that she dropped out of University of Hawaii in February of 1961 and by late August of 1961, she had reappeared and was enrolled at the University of Washington for the fall semester. If you can supply hard data to show she really was in Honolulu in early August of 1961, you would be the first. Go for it. You’ll make history.

And the theory for fraud is not totally without supporting data. There is a disturbing feature to the birth announcements that suggests something is amiss. The address given for the Obamas, 6085 Kalanianaole Hwy, on Oahu, was never provably occupied by the Obamas, but was owned and occupied during that fateful August by the family of Orland Lefforge, a University of Hawaii professor. So the announcements, when combined with official Hawaiian title search records and witness testimony, not only fail to put the Obamas in that house, but put somebody else there altogether, somebody alien to the official Obama nativity story. How did that happen? Did both papers get the address wrong? What explains this anomaly in the data?

There is other evidence for fraud as well, but it is forensic in nature and beyond my willingness to address in this short writing. Furthermore, I think, I hope, by now, you are getting a sense of why the more intense researchers, such as Corsi and company, and many here on FR, have been unable to exclude at least the possibility that something other than an ordinary live birth at a Honolulu hospital occurred. This skepticism you are seeing is the product of intelligent, honest minds attempting to cope with gaping holes in the data, holes that could at least party be filled by the long form, as opposed to the COLB, which has so little real data it cannot be corroborated by the external references it makes.

Again, at the end of the day, it’s not primarily about birth location, and evidence could eventually surface that shows Obama’s eligibility or lack of it, and yet show he was born in Hawaii. I’m open-minded on the matter. But the 50 year business just reflect an abysmal lack of understanding of how eligibility skeptics are pursuing the Hawaiian birth analysis, and people need to get over that and respect the true complexity and obscurity of this problem. If it really was so easy to solve as you and BOR make it, it would have gone away long ago.

BTW, I have pre-ordered Corsi’s book. Looking forward to seeing what he’s got.

Peace,

SR

/Dunham/ not Durham. I do that all the time. Sorry. :)

Regarding the newpaper announcements: After BO was born in Kenya, Grandma went to the HI vital statistics office and registered the birth. You could do this at the time, even though the child was not born in HI. She merely wanted her grandson to have some documentation. Of course there would be no long form born-in-Hawaii certificate. The newpapers as a matter of habit report all the filings from vital statistics.