On October 31st 2008 Doctor Fukino issued the following press release:
"Therefore, I as Director of Health for the State of Hawai'i, along with the Registrar of Vital Statistics who has statutory authority to oversee and maintain these type of vital records, have personally seen and verified that the Hawai'i State Department of Health has Sen. Obama’s original birth certificate on record in accordance with state policies and procedures.
At the very minimum, the competent state official in Hawaii confirms that the original birth certificate is on record as at October 31, 2008. Yet many objected that the official did not explicitly state that Obama was born in Hawaii. Moreover, the statement only avers that the underlying birth certificate is in accordance with "state policies and procedures." Those policies and procedures say the birthers would be to accept the Kenyan birth certificate and issue a certificate of live birth showing birth in Hawaii. Now Doctor Fukino explicitly states that Obama was born in Hawaii and that fact is recorded in the "vital records":
I, Dr. Chiyome Fukino, director of the Hawai'i State Department of Health, have seen the original vital records maintained on file by the Hawai'i State Department of Health verifying Barrack Hussein Obama was born in Hawai'i and is a natural-born American citizen. I have nothing further to add to this statement or my original statement issued in October 2008 over eight months ago...."
Now many complain that Doctor Fukino does not recite that she examined the underlying birth certificate but only some "vital records" which could mean something apart from the original long form birth certificate. Unfortunately for this quibble, Doctor Fukino explicitly refers back to her October 2008 statement. That is significant because that statement says explicitly that the original Birth Certificate is on record. Therefore, no reasonable reader can conclude otherwise than that the competent state official of Hawaii is affirming that the original birth certificate, which is in the file and which she has personally examined in the presence of another official, says that Barack Obama was born in Hawaii.
Either you must believe she is lying, or that she is so stupid she cannot recognize a document common to her job description, or she saw an original birth certificate that says he was born in Hawaii.
There was evidence on the Internet in the form of the YouTube audio of a telephone conversation through a translator with Barack Obama's grandmother in Kenya in which it was said in the audio presented that Barack was born in Kenya and that she was present at the birth. The audio presentation terminated abruptly at this point. Very recently another audio presentation appeared on YouTube which extended that conversation and it was made perfectly clear that the grandmother was confused and recanted, saying that Barack Obama was not in fact born in Kenya but born in Hawaii.
In the absence of such evidence of foreign birth, we are left to spin a series of scenarios because we believe the underlying birth certificate does not show that he was born in Hawaii. But now that thin reed has been dealt a heavy blow by the state of Hawaii. We actually have no reason whatsoever to believe that he was born in Kenya. We actually have no reason to disbelieve that he was born in Hawaii, except the inexplicable fact that he will not give up his birth certificate. Against that we have a certain amount of evidence both documentary and confirmatory that he was born in Hawaii.
I am unaware of any affirmative evidence that Obama was born anywhere except Hawaii. I am not so solilsciptic to believe that if I don't know if it does not exist, therefore, I invite anyone with affirmative evidence of foreign birth for Barack Obama to state it now. In the absence of such a forthcoming, we are reduced to drawing inferences from his refusal to release his birth certificate. But those inferences have been substantially weakened by the statement of the officials of the state of Hawaii. In any case, there are other inferences which could be as readily drawn from Obama's refusal to release the document besides a motive to cover up a foreign birth.
We are left with drawing a damning inference, no more warranted than many others, from a document we haven't seen, which officials declare says the opposite of what we contend, which Obama has not released but which he is under no obligation to release. This soup is too thin and it verges on tinfoil hat territory.
In the absence of any affirmative evidence of foreign birth, and in view of the status of the officials of the state of Hawaii that they have examined the underlying birth certificate and it shows a birth in Hawaii, I think the air has gone out of the birthers' balloon.
But that is a very different thing from saying, as the author does, that the birthers investigation was always nutty. It was not. Before the second revelation by the officials of the state of Hawaii cleared up the contents of the actual birth certificate, one was free to infer that Barack Obama's birth certificate would show a foreign birth. Likewise, so long as the YouTube version of grandma's statement had her saying that he was born in Kenya, there was proof, albeit questionable, of foreign birth. That proof has also been swept away. No one can say that while these two misapprehensions existed, the birther movement was nutty.
What to do now in view of changed circumstances?
The momentum should not be lost but the thrust now should be to portray Barack Obama not as a counterfeit Natural Born Citizen but as a mountebank with a shadowy history which he refuses to illuminate by releasing records of his birth, his passports, his transcripts, his employment and practice. This should be tied in with showing that Obama is a radical socialist, a man with deep and intimate associations with Communists and a paper trail, as much as can be discovered, revealing a man who himself is a Manchurian Marxist. The unaccountable secrecy about his birth is symbolic of his secrecy about his radical associations. Any criticism of the investigation into the birth of Barack Obama should properly be blamed on the paranoia of the man himself who has unaccountably shrouded himself in secrecy. If he is not hiding his place of birth what is he hiding?
