Posted on 07/24/2009 2:32:56 AM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
Among those on television who've been covering the sudden public resurgence of the Birther movement -- but in a much more responsible way than Lou Dobbs -- is MSNBC's Chris Matthews. The other day, he beat up pretty badly on Rep. John Campbell, R-Calif., who's a co-sponsor of the "Birther bill" that would require future presidential candidates to provide proof of their natural-born citizenship. Thursday, he hosted Watergate burglar turned radio host G. Gordon Liddy, who's fallen under the Birthers' sway.
Liddy himself looked decidedly unwell, and sounded out of sorts -- even Matthews seemed to realize that making him into a piñata would be unsporting. I'm not going to do it either, but you can watch the video below.
I'm posting on the appearance, though, because of something Liddy said during it: "You've got a deposition, which is a sworn statement, from the step-grandmother, who says, 'I was present and saw him born in Mombasa, Kenya.'"
Liddy got this particular myth a little garbled, but it's a favorite of the Birthers'. I've covered it before, but it's worth posting on now, I think, because cable news is just getting back to this story (there was some coverage late last year, when the Supreme Court declined to hear one of the Birther lawsuits) and hosts like Matthews don't know all the crazy twists of the conspiracy theory well enough to knock them down.
What Liddy was referring to is actually an affidavit filed by a street preacher named Ron McRae, who conducted an interview with Sarah Obama, the second wife of President Obama's grandfather, through a translator. (Sarah Obama is not the president's biological grandmother, but he calls her "Granny Sarah.")
In that interview, Sarah Obama does in fact say at one point that she was there for her grandson's birth. But that was a mistake, a confusion in translation. As soon as a jubilant McRae began to press her for further details about her grandson being born in Kenya, the family realized the mistake and corrected him. And corrected him. And corrected him. (The audio is available for download here.)
No matter, though, because people who believe in a conspiracy theory simply hear what they want to hear. So some Birther sites have posted transcripts and YouTube clips that end abruptly with the mistranslation and don't include the corrections. McRae, for his part, included the full translation in his affidavit -- he thinks it's all just part of the conspiracy. "Some few younger relatives, including [translator Vitalis Akech Ogombe]," McRae wrote in his court filing, "have obviously been versed to counter such facts with the common purported information from the American news media that Obama was born in Hawaii."
Here's the conversation:
MCRAE: Could I ask her about his actual birthplace? I would like to see his birthplace when I come to Kenya in December. Was she present when he was born in Kenya?
OGOMBE: Yes. She says, yes, she was, she was present when Obama was born.
MCRAE: When I come in December. I would like to come by the place, the hospital, where he was born. Could you tell me where he was born? Was he born in Mombasa?
OGOMBE: No, Obama was not born in Mombasa. He was born in America.
MCRAE: Whereabouts was he born? I thought he was born in Kenya.
OGOMBE: No, he was born in America, not in Mombasa.
MCRAE: Do you know where he was born? I thought he was born in Kenya. I was going to go by and see where he was born.
OGOMBE: Hawaii. Hawaii. Sir, she says he was born in Hawaii. In the state of Hawaii, where his father was also learning, there. The state of Hawaii.
(VIDEO AT LINK)
The article title is misleading. She clearly said Obama was born in Kenya. Whether her “correction” is truthful or not should be subject to further investigation not outright dismissal. One thing is for certain, the Kenyan government put her under armed guard and blocked media access leading up to the election.
It would not end the controversy even if his father were a U.S. citizen and he was born in the White House itself.
Why?
Because he was adopted by an Indonesian. There is the problem of his repatriation records ( never released), passport information and travel, selective service, and college applications as a possible foreign student. And...Orly Taitz states in a petition to a Georgia court that Obama has used multiple social security numbers, the most common shows him to be 119 years old.
So....Even if he took a proper repatriation oath and was a citizen of the U.S., he would still be a person whose natural born status would be in serious question.
She said he was a "son of the village" according to one translation, and people, starting with the "Anabaptist Bishop," took that and ran with it. After a while it gets stated as a fact, rather than as a questionable interpretation of what she said.
It's a little comical, though: so many people going over the supposed birth certification with a fine tooth comb to prove it a forgery, while nobody bothers to find a Luo speaker to straighten out just what Sarah Obama said or didn't say.
Some people are so intensely desirous of a magic way to discredit socialism that they suspend disbelief.
In fact, the only way to defeat Obama and his ideology is politically and that involves much, much hard work, not card tricks.
True. So far all this is only helping Obama. It allows him to portray his opponents as mired in trivia and conspiracy theories.
It's a brilliant strategy. If I believed in conspiracy theories, I'd think he planned things that way, not releasing his documents so that we'd get mired in speculation.
One thing about all this: we had a lot of theories about the Clintons as well, but today nobody talks about them. Maybe we should address that -- what was true, what wasn't, what we'll never know, whether we were right or wrong -- before moving on to new conspiracies.
Did she? Sarah Obama on record as saying in her native language that Barack Obama was a "son of the village." Bishop McRae and others took that as meaning that he was born in the village, but she may only have been speaking metaphorically. Then McRae uses her statement as evidence that Obama was born in Mombasa, on the other side of Kenya.
How much sense does that make? Harry Truman was a proud son of Independence, Missouri. But that doesn't mean he was born there (he was born on a farm elsewhere in the county). And it certainly isn't evidence that he was born in St. Louis.
Sarah isn't actually Barack Obama's grandmother. She's one of his grandfather's other wives. When McRae asked her about Barack Jr. and Barack Sr., about her son and grandson, and then threw in Mombasa there was confusion. I wouldn't say for certain that she didn't know who he was talking about, but I also wouldn't bet the farm that she was trying to say that she was there when Obama was born and the rest of the family was trying to shut her up. It's not the only possibility, maybe not even the most likely.
It's similar with "son of the soil" comments. Mario Cuomo was a "Son of Italy," Jack Kennedy "a proud son of old Ireland," but that doesn't mean that they were born there. Bill Clinton was also a "son of Ireland" and there's a village there that claims him. Nobody bothered that the Clintons were actually his stepfather's family, not his birth father's.
No. Read the affidavits. Granny told the truth that she was at Obamas birth. Her family members “corrected” her when they realised that she had dropped them in it.
Treason? Sarah Palin? Please explain that one!
I was not the person who used the word “treason.”
However, all of the people that I mentioned had the right and the duty to voice their objection to the election of Obama based on a belief that he was not eligible to hold office. Moreover, all of the people mentioned were involved in the process of electing Obama via the Electoral College.
For example, any one of the 50 governors could have withheld their state’s electoral votes, and any member of Congress could have objected when Dick Cheney moved to certify the election of Obama.
Dude you need to take a deep breath and slowly count to ten.
Sometime this crazy stuff is real (Nixon-watergate) sometimes it's not (Clinton white water). But stamping your feet and calling everyone a traitor is not helpful. WorldNetDaily is on the case as are a few other very resourceful people, if there is anything to this story and I think there is, it will be found out. One just can not hide 40 years.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.