Posted on 08/16/2010 7:09:21 AM PDT by LorenC
Last week on the White House's YouTube channel, they answered a question from the mailbag and showed this:
Date of Birth: 04 Aug 1961
Place of Birth: Hawaii, U.S.A.
So what do you expect the conspiratorial response to this will be? That it's a fake passport? That the U.S. Passport office is in on the conspiracy? That YouTube videos aren't admissible in court, and thus this should simply be ignored and not acknowledged as evidence at all? That there's not an uninterrupted shot of the trip advisor unlocking the safe, taking out the folder, and pulling out and opening the passport, and thus they aren't convinced that the passport seen was actually in the folder?
Or maybe just a mix of all of the above, plus whatever other special pleading they can think of.
Why don’t you spring for a long distance call or hop on a plane and interview her in person and report back your findings, instead of making such inane presumptions.
The most pertinent part of her testimony for me was the following statement: “For more than a year the Department of Health has continued to receive approximately 50 email inquiries a month seeking access to President Barack Obama’s birth certificate in spite of the fact that President Obama HAS POSTED A COPY OF THE CERTIFICATE ON HIS FORMER CAMPAIGN WEBSITE.”
That is all that I personally needed to know
from Hawaii’s Dr. Chiyome Fukino
but if you need to know even more,
then to Honolulu you should go, go, go!
;-)
Based on my own requests to Hawaii, IMO they have very little credibility. I also do not believe they received more than 50 emails a month for more than a year. It will catch up with them.
In that case, there is nothing Obama could do to satisfy you that he was born in Hawaii, as any document that he could use to prove it depends on the credibility of the state.
And yet you wonder why he won't release any more documents.
Based on my own requests to Hawaii, IMO they have very little credibility. I also do not believe they received more than 50 emails a month for more than a year. It will catch up with them.
However I do admire your psychic ability to intuit how many emails the Hawaii Department of Health gets per month. That’s impressive.
As Dr. Fukino went on to say in her February, 2010 testimony to the Hawaii Senate committee (testimony which was taken under oath): “Hawaii is a ‘closed records’ state, meaning that vital records are available only to those with a direct and tangible interest as defined by statute; hence, they are not subject to disclosure under public records requests.”
If anyone wants to see and examine Obama’s original birth records without his permission, they should get a subpoena. Then the records can be released. Perhaps the Military Judge in the Lieutenant Colonel Terry Lakin court martial will permit a subpoena to be issued. We’ll all have to wait and see which way Military Judge Colonel Denise Lind goes.
However I do admire your psychic ability to intuit how many emails the Hawaii Department of Health gets per month. That’s impressive.
................... LOL do you think I would make such a statement without some knowledge of how many emails they received?
As Dr. Fukino went on to say in her February, 2010 testimony to the Hawaii Senate committee (testimony which was taken under oath): “Hawaii is a ‘closed records’ state, meaning that vital records are available only to those with a direct and tangible interest as defined by statute; hence, they are not subject to disclosure under public records requests.”
If anyone wants to see and examine Obama’s original birth records without his permission, they should get a subpoena. Then the records can be released. Perhaps the Military Judge in the Lieutenant Colonel Terry Lakin court martial will permit a subpoena to be issued. We’ll all have to wait and see which way Military Judge Colonel Denise Lind goes
......................... I do not believe Hawaii is a completely closed records state despite what they say.
http://www.theobamafile.com/_eligibility/Butterdezillion.htm
....2. The DOH has falsely said that HRS 338-18 prohibits disclosure of government processing records. There are 2 kinds of records -- the records of the vital events themselves, and records of the government’s handling of those records.
Certificates are the record of the vital events. HRS 338-18(a) says that information about the actual birth, death, marriage, and divorce events may only be released according to the provisions set by law or Department of Health rules, thus referring everyone to the DOH Administrative Rules to see how information on actual certificates may be disclosed and to whom. Far from barring "any disclosure" as claimed by the DOH, current Administrative Rules allow a non-certified abbreviated copy of a birth (Chapter 8b, 2.5B), marriage (Ch 8b, 2.8C), or death (Ch8b, 2.6C) certificate to be released to anyone who asks for it. However, a public statement of where someone was born -- such as Fukino’s July 27, 2009 statement about Obama -- is not allowed by the rules (Ch 8b, 2.1A).
All other records are public, except that neither direct viewing nor certified copies are allowed unless the requestor has a direct and tangible interest. Non-certified copies, abstracts, and disclosure of information from the documents are not prohibited -- which, according to Hawaii’s "Sunshine Law" (UIPA) means they must be disclosed upon request, except for certain exemptions, such as for information having privacy interest that outweighs the public interest in disclosure: date of birth, gender, and address .
Since a damaging disclosure of records processing was made in September (see #3), The DOH has been denying access to these records by claiming that ANY DISCLOSURE is forbidden.
I took the occasion last year to pick up the phone and call the department of vital records. I got straight through, no waiting, and spoke with a lady who was very forthcoming, no hesitations or dissembling. I was of course asking about the forms the COLBs are printed upon, not asking for individual data. But the experience was cordial and prompt. And the lady did not try to avoid answering anything which I asked. She confirmed openly that vital records are not destroyed, are kept in environmental controls vaults and are available if so requested, though asking for a long form Birth Cert would take longer than a week since the actual vault and document would have to be accessed to make a certified copy. I was checking on John Klein’s big lie —which he had Lou Dobbs repeat on air— that ‘only a COLB could be accessed from HI since all paper documents were destroyed when the electronic system was begun.’ The lady assured me that such was not the case at all.
Yes Janice Obubo, Director of Communications for the Hawaii Department of Health has confirmed that all original records are still on file, nothing has been destroyed. Ms. Okubo’s exact statement was “we have copies of copies” in which she meant that there are multiple backups for all original documents and the originals are indeed there.
Get a subpoena, and an interested party can see the original.
On the issue of getting a copy of the original long form, I had a $100 bet with Freeper Rolling_Stone that you could not get a long form issued since 2001. Freeper Danae said that she is from Hawaii and would order one. I offered to double the bet and donate $200 to FreeRepublic if a long form Hawaii birth certificate issued in 2010 was to be scanned and posted on this website. I waited the requisite six weeks for a long form Hawaii birth certificate to be posted. It is now seven weeks and no such document has appeared.
I understand that Danae had a death in her family and wasn’t able to respond quickly but any other Freeper from Hawaii could have responded. None did.
I based my side of the bet on trusting Hawaii Department of Health spokeswoman Janice Okubo’s on the record statement that the state of Hawaii no longer issues copies of long form birth certificates and the 2010 Certificate of Live Birth is the official and only birth certificate of the state of Hawaii and it’s a “short form” computer print out.
I find it hard to believe that not one single person who was born in Hawaii has taken the time to scan a newly issued copy of a long form birth certificate on the
internet if they are indeed still available. That leads me to believe that you can’t get a new copy of an old (prior to 2001) long form.
I am reasonably certain that the state could produce a certified copy of an original long form under subpoena.
“LOL do you think I would make such a statement without some knowledge of how many emails they received?”
“I do not believe Hawaii is a completely closed records state despite what they say.”
“....2. The DOH has falsely said that HRS 338-18 prohibits disclosure of government processing records. There are 2 kinds of records — the records of the vital events themselves, and records of the government’s handling of those records.
Certificates are the record of the vital events. HRS 338-18(a) says that information about the actual birth, death, marriage, and divorce events may only be released according to the provisions set by law or Department of Health rules, thus referring everyone to the DOH Administrative Rules to see how information on actual certificates may be disclosed and to whom. Far from barring “any disclosure” as claimed by the DOH, current Administrative Rules allow a non-certified abbreviated copy of a birth (Chapter 8b, 2.5B), marriage (Ch 8b, 2.8C), or death (Ch8b, 2.6C) certificate to be released to anyone who asks for it. However, a public statement of where someone was born — such as Fukino’s July 27, 2009 statement about Obama — is not allowed by the rules (Ch 8b, 2.1A).
All other records are public, except that neither direct viewing nor certified copies are allowed unless the requestor has a direct and tangible interest. Non-certified copies, abstracts, and disclosure of information from the documents are not prohibited — which, according to Hawaii’s “Sunshine Law” (UIPA) means they must be disclosed upon request, except for certain exemptions, such as for information having privacy interest that outweighs the public interest in disclosure: date of birth, gender, and address .
Since a damaging disclosure of records processing was made in September (see #3), The DOH has been denying access to these records by claiming that ANY DISCLOSURE is forbidden.”
An inappropriate disclosure or an illegal disclosure by a state official does not void adherence to the letter of the law for further disclosures. What it does is give Obama the right to sue the state for inappropriate or illegal disclosures. He has chosen not to sue.
Anyone who feels that there has been an inappropriate application of the disclosure of records laws in Hawaii can file suit to straighten that issue out. Thus far, to the best of my knowledge, no one has taken that step.
I would think that a conservative constitutional law firm would take on such an issue “pro bono.” I suggest the Landmark Legal Foundation.
http://www.landmarklegal.org/DesktopDefault.aspx
No, I'm saying I didn't see where you provided a name or a link to the person you said added this information, or that there's any proof this person wrote the lame excuse posted at the blog.
No it doesn't; you just made that up. Obama's Wikipedia page was created months before "Queens" was added.
I didn't make anything up. I went back in the history for that page until it went to a couple of pages that weren't about Obama at all:
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Barack_Obama&direction=next&oldid=5291761
It looked like the first Obama page started around Aug. 18, as I didn't bother searching further back. I went back later and found where Gerald Farinas added the Queen's Hospital entry in July 2004. There are some interesting bits of evidence from that entry that undermines the claim he just made up the hospital where Obama was born.
AGAIN: THERE IS NO CONCURRENT NEWS SOURCE THAT WIKIPEDIA USED. A college kid added it, and he, by his own admission, had NO source. Do you just forget stuff between paragraphs you write?
Farinas added a lot more than just the name of the hospital. Thanks to the annotations at wikipedia, we can see he added this information too:
"Both his parents were students at the East-West Center at the University of Hawai'i at Manoa. At the age of two, the couple were divorced and Obama's mother re-married to another East-West Center student from Indonesia. The family moved to Indonesia for a couple of years but Obama returned to Hawai'i to be raised by his grandmother on Beretania Street in downtown Honolulu. He was enrolled in the fifth grade at Punahou School at got his first job at Baskin-Robbins on the corner of King and Punahou Streets. He graduated from Punahou School with honors."
This is a lot of very specific information for Farinas to have come up with: the East-West Center, Beretania Street, first job at Baskin-Robbins. Guess what?? He didn't imagine all that stuff. It was all published in a Honolulu Star-Bulletin story from March 21, 2004 (Farina's wikipedia edits were dated July 7, 2004).
"In 1960, Kenya native Barack Obama Sr. was the first African to study at the East-West Center, when he met S. Ann Dunham, from Kansas, who was attending the University of Hawaii-Manoa. The two married and young Barack was born the following year."
"His parents divorced when he was 2 years old and his mother married another East-West Center student. In 1969, his stepfather moved the family to the stepfather's native Indonesia. After two years in Jakarta, Barack moved back to Hawaii to stay with his maternal grandmother, who still lives in the same house on Beretania Street. He enrolled in the fifth grade at Punahou School."
"His first job was at the Baskin-Robbins ice cream shop at King and Punahou streets, and he has said he's 'never liked ice cream since.'"
source: http://archives.starbulletin.com/2004/03/21/news/story4.html
The part of this that bugs me is why Farinas would have all this very specific information but feel compelled to 'guess' the hospital Obama was born in ... especially when that same Star-Bulletin story says the name of the hospital:
"Born: Aug. 4, 1961, Kapiolani Medical Center for Women and Children, Honolulu."
What I don't know is if this story has been 'corrected' since the initial publication or if it really said Kapiolani in 2004. How would Farinas miss this while he was so busy copying and pasting all the other material from their story??? Hmmmmm. You been played. And if it did originally say Queen's hospital ... well, either way, you been played.
That's a big unwarranted assumption; it's a high school newspaper. Why do you assume she saw a copy?
Why do I think Maya saw this story?? Well, thanks to that Star-Bulletin story, it says Maya taught history and social studies at that school. That's why the Rainbow Edition newsletter identifies her as "of our very own, Maya Soetoro." This explains how they got a personal interview and photos. She didn't have to write a letter to the editor to tell them they got the facts wrong. She could have walked right into the office.
Have you ever even SEEN a high school newspaper run a correction on a minor factual point?
This is a 'minor' factual point?? Part of a good journalism experience is to teach kids to be accountable and correct their mistakes, especially factual mistakes. That's what newspapers do and the education to do that starts young. I can't speak for the state of Hawaii, but in Indiana, for example, their high school journalism standards include "Retraction: correcting something printed or said in the most timely fashion" under "Law and Ethics" (it would do you some good to educate yourself on some of those topics).
source: http://dc.doe.in.gov/Standards/AcademicStandards/PrintLibrary/docs-english/2007-10-23-journalism.pdf
I’m sure you’re aware this isn’t testimony so much as a prepared statement she read. It’s not completely honest because she’s not explaining that the requests the DOH gets are for an original birth certificate and obviously, even if genuine, the alleged COLB is not an original birth certificate unless you believe none was available before June 6, 2007. She also talks about the state being a closed records state, yet she fails to mention 338-18(d) which gives her statutory authority to make ANY information public from a vital record, so she’s not being fully honest. Next she talks about the individuals they identified as repeat requesters, but she doesn’t explain that many of the requests are made for information that is supposed to be publicly available. Other requests are made because the DOH plays stupid or refuses to respond to requests they are obligated to answer. Honestly, James, why would you make excuses for this kind of dishonesty??
Are you accusing me of making up the quote I posted? Because if you're accusing me of lying, I'd like for you to be clear about that.
I didn't make anything up. I went back in the history for that page until it went to a couple of pages that weren't about Obama at all:
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Barack_Obama&direction=next&oldid=5291761
It looked like the first Obama page started around Aug. 18, as I didn't bother searching further back.
Holy cow you're lazy. I mean, it just involves clicking "older 50" a time or two, and the fact that it even SAYS there's an "older 50" means there are older edits. Have you EVER researched Wikipedia history before?
Plus, once again, you're wrong. Amazingly, and remarkably disingenuously, your example link is what Obama's Wiki page looked like FOR TWO MINUTES as the result of vandalism. Here's what Obama's Wikipedia page looked like way back on March 18, 2004:
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Barack_Obama&oldid=3030512
I went back later and found where Gerald Farinas added the Queen's Hospital entry in July 2004. There are some interesting bits of evidence from that entry that undermines the claim he just made up the hospital where Obama was born...
What I don't know is if this story has been 'corrected' since the initial publication or if it really said Kapiolani in 2004. How would Farinas miss this while he was so busy copying and pasting all the other material from their story???
Finally you make a point that isn't either wrongheaded or completely wrong. I think you make a fair assumption that the March 2004 article was (in some format) the source of several of the other edits made. The specific inclusion of the street corner where the Baskin-Robbins was located seems particularly compelling.
BUT, as you no doubt notice, the mention of Kapiolani isn't in the text of the article at all; it's in a separate little data box. I don't know what that looked like in the original printed article, or what it looked like on the website at the time, but take a moment to see what information is unique to that box (i.e., not included in the article text), and whether THAT information got added to Wikipedia by Farinas.
The 1991 graduation date from Columbia? Not added. The magna cum laude designation? Not added. The names and ages of Obama's daughters (mentioned only in the box and the photo caption)? Not added. Kapiolani? Not added.
And most notably: Obama's birthdate? Not only was it not added, but Farinas got it WRONG. He added that Obama was born in 1962, not 1961. A bizarre thing to do if he was paying any attention to that box. But an understandable math error if he was extrapolating from the age 42 as given in the article.
How would Farinas miss this while he was so busy copying and pasting all the other material from their story???
Not a single piece of information that's unique to that box was included in Farinas' Wikipedia edits. He missed ALL that information, not just Kapiolani. Feel free to claim conspiracy again if you like, or continue to move the goalposts. You started off claiming that Obama himself had specifically claimed to be born in two different hospitals, and now you're reduced to arguing that the guy who we've mutually established first added 'Queens' to the Wikipedia page is lying when he says he had no source for that factoid.
Regardless, kudos on finding a real journalist who reported Kapiolani as Obama's birth hospital as early as March 2004. That certainly doesn't do much to support your overall thesis that Obama later started naming two different hospitals, since you still can't find any sources where Obama ever named Queens.
I didn't make any accusations, just pointed outed the deficiencies in what you've presented.
Have you EVER researched Wikipedia history before?
No, actually not. There were no 'older 50' links to click from what you linked from your blog. I clicked the 'previous revision link.' Later I found the "View History" tab. Nevertheless, I certainly discovered this page has had a wide variety of things posted on it.
BUT, as you no doubt notice, the mention of Kapiolani isn't in the text of the article at all; it's in a separate little data box.
That's called a 'sidebar.' The original story would have been formatted relatively similar to the archived version.
I don't know what that looked like in the original printed article, or what it looked like on the website at the time, but take a moment to see what information is unique to that box (i.e., not included in the article text), and whether THAT information got added to Wikipedia by Farinas.
There's plenty of other information from the story that wasn't included besides what appears in the sidebar. It's not particularly relevant, since Farinas decided to specifically mention a hospital of birth, which is posted with the story, and he made sure to include the hospital name in the SAME SENTENCE where he added the mother's name exactly as listed in the story.
And most notably: Obama's birthdate? Not only was it not added, but Farinas got it WRONG. He added that Obama was born in 1962, not 1961. A bizarre thing to do if he was paying any attention to that box.
It's more bizarre considering the text in the story indicates what year Obama was born, "In 1960, Kenya native Barack Obama Sr. was the first African to study at the East-West Center, when he met S. Ann Dunham, from Kansas, who was attending the University of Hawaii-Manoa. The two married and young Barack was born the following year."
Regardless, kudos on finding a real journalist who reported Kapiolani as Obama's birth hospital as early as March 2004. That certainly doesn't do much to support your overall thesis that Obama later started naming two different hospitals, since you still can't find any sources where Obama ever named Queens
We still haven't ruled out that the information in the UH Lab School newsletter was obtained and/or confirmed by Obama's own sister, a point you've completely punted. She could have easily had this corrected if it was wrong, plus no one in Obama's camp seemed to notice his wikipedia entry was allegedly wrong for about three years. As a community organizer, seems like Obama should have had plenty of people in his camp who could have seen that hospital listing sooner and tried to correct it the same way the birth year was changed to a specific birth date less than three weeks after Farinas added the hospital name.
There's another couple of tidbits of information that are bizarre. Gerald Farinas is a politician in Chicago who is originally from Hawaii. It's odd that he was spending so much time on Obama's wikipedia bio and then a month or so later, ended up working as a campaign aide for Alan Keyes. The excuse that he 'guessed' about the hospital where Obama was born just doesn't pass the smell test. He had access to a story that listed a hospital. Maybe he intentionally put the wrong hospital in and didn't want to admit why he did that.
Second, the Star-Bulletin story contains some information that doesn't jibe with the official Obama bio. It makes it sound like SAD married Lolo when Obama was 2 years old. It says Obama's stepfather moved his family to Indonesia in 1969. The 'official' story is 1967. Then it says, "After two years in Jakarta, Barack moved back to Hawaii to stay with his maternal grandmother." Seems like it should say grandparents, not just grandmother. They spell Obama's daughter's name as Maile instead of Malia. It's not clear where they got much of the information for the story since it says Obama declined to do an interview. With this much wrong information in the story, there's no reason to assume Kapiolani is correct.
So to summarize, edge919 goes from the strong claim that Maya definitely said her brother was born in Queen's hospital, to the much weaker claim that it can't be ruled out that she said it.
Nice job of moving the goalpoasts!
This is what I wrote, “They didn’t successfully scrub Obama’s sister from saying Obama was born in Queen’s Hospital in 2004, but if you want to pretend this came from the educated guess of some phantom college student, dream on,” followed by “It was soooooo sloppy that only one correction was made and that was to an item Obama’s own sister doesn’t seem to know.” The newsletter that printed Obama being born in Queen’s Hospital was from a story in which Maya Soetoro was interviewed and quoted serveral times ... and she worked at the school that produced the newsletter. If it was wrong, she could have had it corrected. There’s no evidence she did so, so I still stand by what I wrote. I haven’t moved any goalposts. Loren claimed to debunk this point and failed.
Yes, that's what you wrote. You'll notice in that sentence of yours you are making the rather strong claim that she did in fact say it.
Now that you have utterly failed to prove she said it, you have retreated to saying that it can't be ruled out she said it.
Sorry, my friend, but that is moving the goalposts.
so I still stand by what I wrote.
No you don't. You are no longer making the same strong claim you were making before.
There is no shame in retreating. However, there is great shame in retreating while pretending not to retreat. And that, my friend, is what you are doing.
So that's the standard you're relying on now? Humor me then: what would convince you that the "Queens" factoid was NOT obtained from and/or confirmed by Obama's sister? Because it hardly seems worth continuing unless I know what level of proof you're holding out for.
Oh, and incidentally, don’t think it’s escaped my attention that you’ve not only shifted the burden (asking us to prove that Maya DIDN’T say Queens, rather than substantiating your own original claim that she DID), but you’re asking us to prove a negative to boot.
Did I somehow stump you into silence with a question that called for nothing more than to express a personal position?
So to reiterate, you say you’re not yet convinced that the “Queens” reference in the high school newspaper cannot be credited to Maya. So what *would* convince you that the “Queens” factoid was NOT obtained from and/or confirmed by Obama’s sister?
Did you ask a question?? It looked like you gave up on the argument.
I'll repeat it again:
You say you’re not yet convinced that the “Queens” reference in the high school newspaper cannot be credited to Maya. So what *would* convince you that the “Queens” factoid was NOT obtained from and/or confirmed by Obama’s sister?
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