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.
Who?
Chrissy Matthews, 0lberdork? and just what "reporter" can be trusted these days?
Always,always, always follow the money. BullBleep walks when money talks.
Basically, there is nothing known about this guy. Everything has either been hidden or destroyed.
“Do I think it’s suspicious that he spend a large amount of $ keeping it from being released? Yes, but I think it may be not because of birthplace, but rather parentage.!”
I have yet to see any sort of verification of the “large sums of money” spent on lawyers for this.
I think Obama is letting this stew, and when it becomes big enough, they will release it, and make all these people look stupid, burst their bubble, and make anyone who criticizes him fit into the category of “those crazy birthers” from then on.
Obama’s mom hadn't been in the country long enough to qualify her son for American citizenship if he was born outside the country.
I have yet to see a plausible explanation for this fact.
“Well the birth announcement lists an address his family never resided at.”
I’m confused. Are you suggesting this was a conspiracy from his birth?
Somehow I doubt it. The professional birthers would just claim it was a fake and keep raising money.
BTW, does anyone have an example of a “Long Form Birth Certificate” from that time period in Hawaii? It actually would be most helpful to see an example of just what you are talking about so as to contrast the differences.
Sounds good. We also need to concentrate our efforts on fixing the pathetic GOP.
I had read previously about the fact that he was in the birth announcements on the Hawaii newspapers back in 1961. That seems to end the argument for me. Unless a conspiracy theorist can somehow figure out that they knew he was going to be President and this was a problem so they ensured a fake recording in the newspaper in 1961 (Joking).... Anyways, I still like to bring it up now and again to my lefty friends when they start talking about Haliburton and Cheney and Bush conspiracies. It’s something we can needle them with when the lefties are being stupid on us.
it is all part of the same web of lies that the POSOTUS is fabricating. This Kenyan buttwipe needs to realize he may or may not be legaly the president....but if he tries to touch the constitution with his criminal touch (he did promise to obey and protect and follow the constitution) he will be in a world of hurt....and wind up losing states to secession, and where that will follow.
One correction, the editorial describes the Arizona territory as being “outside of the United States”, that is incorrect.
The Territory of Arizona was, at the time of Senator Goldwater’s birth an organized, incorporated, territory. Constitutionally, per the insular cases, that is part of the United States and not just a possession.
This is either silly or stupid. Most of us can pay attention and oppose mightily the agenda of obama but are getting pretty weary of those who say - “we’ve seen it, it’s authentic” and not one person or reporting agency will show us exactly what piece of paper has convinced them that the real birth certificate has shown up. Pretty easy stuff but it’s looking increasingly impossible to put the birth certificate where their mouth is.
It’s all too simple - show it!
This is the part I don’t get: if Barack’s mom was a U.S. citizen, then he’s a U.S. citizen. Doesn’t matter if he was born on the Moon.
Additionally, it would be nice to know the name of the father on the birth certificate. If it was indeed Obama Sr., he is instantly a British citizen also by birth.
Well if they had already done it why the need to check again and say this.?
Why doesn't he just show the thing?
So one person Dobbs raises the question and the subject gets brought up so if the media did their job this subject would be getting brought up all the time.
the media make me sick
Clearing the Smoke on Obama’s Eligibility: An Intelligence Investigator’s June 10 Report
In 1961 if a 17 year old American girl gave birth in a foreign country to a child whose father was not an American citizen, that child had no right to any American citizenship, let alone the “natural born” citizenship that qualifies someone for the Presidency under Article II, Section 1 of the Constitution.
“ 7 FAM 1133.2-2 Original Provisions and Amendments to Section 301
(CT:CON-204; 11-01-2007)
“a. Section 301 as Effective on December 24, 1952: When enacted in 1952, section 301 required a U.S. citizen married to an alien to have been physically present in the United States for ten years, including five after reaching the age of fourteen, to transmit citizenship to foreign-born children. The ten-year transmission requirement remained in effect from 12:01 a.m. EDT December 24, 1952, through midnight November 13, 1986, and still is applicable to persons born during that period.
Where was Barack’s mom born?
“This is the part I don’t get: if Barack’s mom was a U.S. citizen, then he’s a U.S. citizen. Doesn’t matter if he was born on the Moon.”
Dear boy, most ANYONE can become a citizen of the USA,
It happens every day for people that never had any past relations with the US.
It has nothing to do with “NATURAL BORN” citizen, which is required for being POTUS.
I am amazed that a FReeper for 10 years would not know this.
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