Good points.
— “1963” was a reference to the divorce decree, and I was in error by a month. It was filed in Jan., 1964. It does allude to a Feb. 1961 marriage, but there is no evidence that such a ceremony took place.
By the time she filed for divorce, Obama was out of Stanley Ann’s life and apparently no longer needed, whether as a father or merely a cover story. However, in order to ensure full custody of the child, she would have had to have some kind of legal severance. The divorce decree, whether there was a legal marriage or one established in common law by word, accomplished that nicely.
— Oral histories by old friends are as reliable as “Dreams,” which is not at all. We’re dealing only in facts, remember?
As long as we’re speaking of old friends and acquaintances, how about a witness to the courtship, the wedding, the pregnancy, the birth, the happy little family with a newborn, etc. etc. Why does NOBODY remember a very dark African married to a very white girl and an out-of-wedlock pregnancy that defied every convention?
As far as I’m concerned, we can indeed consider “that SAD had responsibility for this child within a relatively short period of time of being born.” However, “accepting” requires a provable fact or two. I’m open to proof.
I’m all for DNA evidence. Go for it. Might tell us something, but NOT where he was born.
“It does allude to a Feb. 1961 marriage, but there is no evidence that such a ceremony took place.”
Right, but I’m trying to understand what meets your standards of evidence. I assume you accept the divorce decree as a legitimate legal document, not something fabricated? The judge in this case apparently accepted the validity of the statements made about the marriage. But you seem to imply such statements cannot or should not be counted as evidence. I’m just trying to understand the logic for that position.
Eyewitness testimony is notoriously unreliable. But there’s a world a difference between a single account that may be mistaken or fabricated (e.g., Race Bannon’s account is a single eyewitness without any corroborating evidence from friends or contemporaneous documents) and a SET of eyewitness accounts that not only is mutually reinforcing but also appears corroborated by available university records.
If we’re literally limited to things of undisputed provenance that are written down (and perhaps signed and notarized?), the evidence we have and can ever have to work with is preciously thin. Imagine trying any criminal case according to these demanding standards of evidence. I doubt that even 1% of those in prison could remain if we adopted this stringent view of evidence.
Offhand, I can’t think of a single written document (unless someone’s diary has not yet come to light) that would prove to your satisfaction that Ann Obama was in Seattle with an infant named Barack during the fall of 1961 or spring of 1962. I don’t see how this gets us very far.
It makes more sense to me to consider all forms of evidence, but then mentally “weigh” them based on type/source etc. A single eyewitness account doesn’t count as heavily as a mutually consistent account provided by 3 different people (preferably 3 who didn’t know each other or have any plausible means of coordinating their accounts). Verbal accounts that don’t square with written evidence likewise have to be discounted etc.
What we end up with is the kind of evidence in a criminal trial. Juries obviously aren’t infallible, but by having a group of people try to figure out what happened, the odds are better of arriving at a reasonable approximation of the truth than if a single juror were given the task of deciding etc. One of the strengths of juries is the ability for everyone to lay their cards on the table and have others say “But what about this?” or “You haven’t accounted for that.” A judgment based on the thoroughly vetted ‘weight of the evidence’ is the best a jury can ever do and the best we’re ever going to be able to do in this case as well. But we’d do a hell of a lot better job if the legal authorities used every tool at their disposal to unearth the evidence needed to arrive at the truth. That clearly has not yet happened; but that is not tantamount to concluding that it can’t.