Posted on 07/28/2009 5:29:21 AM PDT by reaganaut1
Pres. Barack Obama has a birthday coming up, a week from Tuesday. We hope he takes the day off—or even the whole week, the briefest of respites from his busy schedule of truncating our liberties while exhausting both the public coffers and our patience. The president’s birthday comes to mind because we recently spent some time looking at a photograph of his birth certificate, being held by Joe Miller of Factcheck.org, who took the time to examine it. President Obama was born on August 4, 1961, at 7:24 p.m, in Honolulu County, Hawaii, on the island of Oahu. The serial number on his birth certificate is 010641. Baby Barack’s birth was not heralded, as some of his partisans have suggested, by a star in the east, but it was heralded by the Honolulu Star, as well as the Honolulu Advertiser, each of which published birth announcements for young Mr. Obama.
Much foolishness has become attached to the question of President Obama’s place of birth, and a few misguided souls among the Right have indulged it. The myth that Barack Obama is ineligible to be president represents the hunt for a magic bullet that will make all the unpleasant complications of his election and presidency disappear. We are used to seeing conspiracy theories from the Left, for instance among the one in three Democrats who believe that 9/11 was an inside job conducted with the foreknowledge of the Bush administration. We’ve seen everything under the sun blamed on Dick Cheney and Halliburton, and Rosie O’Donnell has given us much mirth with her metallurgical expertise, while Andrew Sullivan has beclowned himself and tarnished the good name of The Atlantic with his investigation into the “real” parentage of Trig Palin. Most notable, the Iraq War summoned the craziness in a big way, and there are those who still shudder over their espressos at the mention of the Carlyle Group. And there is a fair amount of crossover between those fixated on Obama’s birth certificate and the 9/11 “truthers” — lawyer Phil Berg, for instance, is a player in both worlds. There is nothing that President Obama’s coterie would enjoy more than to see the responsible Right become a mirror image of the loopy Left circa 2003.
The birth-certificate business is not a uniquely conservative phenomenon; the allegation that Obama was born in Kenya seems to have originated with a Hillary Clinton supporter at a blog called The Blue State. Either way, this fantasy is not particularly widespread within the conservative movement, but it has attracted enough interest that it needs to be addressed.
The fundamental fiction is that Obama has refused to release his “real” birth certificate. This is untrue. The document that Obama has made available is the document that Hawaiian authorities issue when they are asked for a birth certificate. There is no secondary document cloaked in darkness, only the state records that are used to generate birth certificates when they are requested.
If one applies for a United States passport, the passport office will demand a birth certificate. It defines this as an official document bearing “your full name, the full name of your parent(s), date and place of birth, sex, date the birth record was filed, and the seal or other certification of the official custodian of such records.” The Hawaiian birth certificate President Obama has produced—the document is formally known as a “certificate of live birth”—bears that information. It has been inspected by reporters, and several state officials have confirmed that the information in permanent state records is identical to that on the president’s birth certificate—which is precisely what one expects, of course, since the state records are used to generate those documents when they are requested. In other words, what President Obama has produced is the “real” birth certificate of myth and lore. The director of Hawaii’s health department and the registrar of records each has personally verified that the information on Obama’s birth certificate is identical to that in the state’s records, the so-called vault copy. Given that fact, we are loath even to engage the fanciful notion that President Obama was born elsewhere, contrary to the information on his birth certificate, but we note for the record that his mother was a native of Kansas, whose residents have been citizens of the United States for a very long time, and whose children are citizens of the United States as well.
The attention paid to President Obama’s place of birth is not unprecedented. In fact, it may be the only thing President Obama has in common with Pres. Chester Arthur, whose opponents whispered that he had been born in Canada. A number of unsuccessful presidential candidates—George Romney, Barry Goldwater, and Lowell Weicker among them—actually were born outside of the United States (in Mexico, the Arizona Territory, and Paris, respectively) to American parents and thereby into American citizenship. If the conspiracy theorists have evidence that President Obama went through the naturalization process, let them show it. But there is no such evidence, because this theory is based on unreality, as two minutes’ examining the claims of its proponents reveals. The hallmark of a conspiracy theory is that a lack of evidence for the theory is taken as yet more evidence for the theory. Indeed, the maddening thing about dealing with conspiracy hobbyists of this or any sort is the ever-shifting nature of their argument and their alleged evidence: Never mind the birth certificate, his step-grandmother said he was born in Kenya! (No, she didn’t.)
One of the unfortunate consequences of this red-herring discussion is that there are plenty of questions about Obama’s background and history that we would like to have answered. In spite of two books of memoirs, there remain murky areas in his biography. And when it comes to those college transcripts, count us among those who’d love to know whether Dr. Bailout ever took an advanced economics class and how he performed in it.
Barack Obama may prefer European-style socialized health care. He may consider himself a citizen of the Earth and sometimes address his audiences as “people of the world,” as though he were born not in another country but on another planet. Like Bruce Springsteen, he has a lot of bad political ideas; but he was born in the U.S.A.
The story about the Kalanianaole address not being associated with his mother or her parents is very disturbing...
“So how would the announcement be any kind of proof that he was born in Hawaii?”
It lists the address that his parents lived at when he was born. I know that the conspiracy theorists are out there now saying he didn’t live there because no one remembers a black boy living there or whatever. You can go ahead and continue to believe it and sound like all the nutballs that believe the Bush administration caused 9/11. Its up to you.
I hope you are joking. Please do not tell me that you are serious.
No, it makes Hussein look foolish. Every nation, encluding the ME, has denounced him as weak and one who doesn't keep his promises. He's a scaredy pants over something in his past and every day he doesn't make his presidency transparent is further proof.
You know the old saying about assuming anything, right? Along about that same time, my uncle and his family was stationed overseas. My cousin was born there but the announcement back here shows their US address. My cousin has always had to jump through rings to prove US citizenship. BTW, it's been proven the Obama family never lived at the address and most likely mama and papa never co-habitated. Remember, back then single motherhood was simply not done in polite society so heaven and earth was moved to prevent any whisper of such.
I can’t argue with you. The night before was just too over the top! I never believed it. Either he intentionally pulled the plug that night or they kept her on ice to get the biggest bang for the buck. Either way, this is one mighty sick tribe...
Lol, as I recall, it was you who started this off with a very long explanation. And whatever the two documents might be called, certificate and certification have different meanings. As long as that's kept in mind, it's easy to distinguish between the two documents.
Good one.
What is so difficult to understand or are you intentionally being obstinate? The announcement does not state where he was born. They never lived at the address listed. The newspaper could not verify who placed the announcement. Announcements can be placed by anyone and it's not the newspaper's responsibility to verify the info.
My grandmother placed my birth announcement in half a dozen different states so the relatives would know. By your reasoning that's proof I was born in all of them.
When your comrade gullibly falls into the trap of engaging in a peripheral firefight, one which is being deliberately fanned by the enemy to weaken its opposition, which ultimately helps everybody on our side lose the war.
That's what everybody's trying to say. They're not claiming that BHO's US birth is legitimate (nobody knows that), but that it is a dangerous distraction clearly being exploited by this administration's strategists to make all of BHO's opposition look petty & absurd & our falling into the trap of even addressing it at all right now undercuts the credibility - and the power - of our opposition to all the truly scary stuff this man is doing right now.
This is where you went wrong. Certificates don't certify anything. Designated individuals certify that something has taken place. They could record that certification on a brown paper bag. Certificates merely reflect what a properly designated person has certified and recorded.
What does an official certificate forged by an unauthorized person certify? It is a certificate, but a certificate is just a form until valid information is added by a person authorized to certify.
Kindly explain how YOUR plan works and then I may see the light and drop the birth certificate effort. I've been waiting for a GOP plan since November 4th and I'll still be waiting tomorrow...
Thanks Rudman, but.. you're right. Since both laws were enacted later, they don't mean anything.
I have read, in several places... that in 1961 (2 years after becoming a state)... in Hawaii, it was common for people in various islands to get a COLB in Hawaii. If so....then it was possible to get a COLB, without having been actually born on state territory.
If this is true... then, the COLB is, indeed, NOT PROOF. It's evidence, but... not conclusive. Supposedly, a long form birth certificate would contain the actual birth location... Which, I think... is why we should all have a right to see it.... to KNOW that our President in qualified to hold the office.
I think I can answer #2... and, the answer is: No one. It's strictly the candidate's word... and, a required signature from the Party chair.
"Our" opposition just voted while dancing on tippy toes for Sotomayor. We don't have any OPPOSITION....
It doesn’t matter if he is or he isn’t the issue is he is hiding the truth from the American People. Too bad most of you weren’t around during the Nixon years when a far less serious grievance forced Nixon out of office. Apparently, Americans like lying, cheating, deceiving presidents these days...Nixon should NEVER have resigned....
A certificate is the means by which a person certifies, makes a certification. Yeah, the person certifies. In the old days, the Middle Ages, which I study, word of mouth certification was preferred to written certificates because written certifications/certificates could be forged.
But that the certifier is a person doesn’t change the fact that calling document “A” a certificate and document “B” a certification is gibberish, linguistically. A is as much a certification as B is a certification and B is as much a certificate as A is a certificate and both of them are, yes, issued by a certifier.
Which is where this debate started.
I guess it’s time for it to end. You keep moving the goalposts around the field.
Ok, let's forget about the next door neighbor who doesn't remember a black boy living next to her. Let's forget that Baro couldn't find anyone who remembered the Obamas at that address. Let's also forget that Professor and Mrs. Lefforge owned and lived at that address all these years. And let's forget that the announcement hit the internet 10 days after Mrs. Lefforge died. So, we're down to how does a couple of college students with a new baby afford such a nice house a block off the beach?
Interesting a professor lived at that address. It could be that's the very reason their address was used. Seems there's some college connection at every turn with Hussein. Wonder if any research has been done on Lefforge's beliefs? Or it could be that both Mr. and Lefforge were now unable to disprove the announcement.
Obama is probably a citizen. He is probably not a "Natural Born Citizen," and I can state unequivocally he ain't from Maine. So, why don't we get Maine and 1 or 5 other states to simply pass a law requiring that Presidential Candidates present documentary bona fides as to their eligibility. No proof. No electoral votes.
That might be a way to SCOTUS off its haunches to decide what a "Natural Born Citizen" actually is, or is not.
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