Since that time the left has very nearly succeeded in capturing the language concerning this issue in a manner reminiscent of their capture of the language surrounding the "Swiftboating" of John F. Kerry's fraudulent claims of wartime service. If one googles "Swiftboating" today and looks at Wikipedia, not for the truth of its contents, but for an idea of how the culture is treating the subject, one will learn that Swiftboating now means to falsely discredit someone. Thus the left has succeeded in redefining "borking" to be "Swiftboating."
Similarly, the left now seeks to win the war over global warming by winning the battle for language. The questioners of a global warming hypothesis are now labeled "deniers" when at least they might be referred to as, "skeptics." Note the term implies that the matter is a truth which cannot be questioned but only denied. We see the phenomenon also applied to conspiratorial theorists concerning the terrorist strikes of 9/11 who are now routinely referred to as, "truthers".
If you canthe win the war over vocabulary you can win the war.
The left is now succeeding in rewriting the reality surrounding the constitutional question of Barack Obama's qualification to be President of the United States as a "natural born citizen" by the pejorative "birther." Irrespective of where one stands on the issue of the place of Barack Obama's birth, it is intellectually dishonest to claim that those who question whether Barack Obama is a natural Hawaiian born citizen are nuts who should be denigrated as "birthers."
These critics of open inquiry further denigrate "birthers" as racists, insinuating that only racists would make constitutional inquiry into the matter. I regard this as another example of playing the race card to be the first refuge of liberals. "Birthers" are also often denigrated as conspiratorialists. I include two replies to demonstrate that there is a perfectly plausible scenario for a fraudulent issuance of a certification of live birth which requires absolutely no conspiracy it could have been fully executed by one person acting alone.
This article is one which we FReepers want to bookmark and have ready to hand, ready to draw like a colt peacemaker and fire at any Lib like Chris Matthews who trespasses on the truth in such a fashion.
Here are two replies which I think anticipate much of what this author says which were posted on August 1st and 2nd and are worthy of reposting here because they make the point that the matter is still open and it is intellectually respectable to keep an open mind on the issue. It is a curious truth of human nature that the more Barack Obama descends in the polls the more intellectually respectable the questions of " birthers" become.
Here are the replies:
Yesterday, I posted the following reply which I make bold to post again because it expands on the author's conclusion that Obama was in all likelihood born in Hawaii. More importantly, it justifies the entire inquiry into the birth certificate not just because of the collateral information obtained, but on the merits of the controversy itself as they were then known. It is the new information rather than the absence of any grounds for the original investigation which lead one now to conclude that likelihood is that Obama was born in Hawaii. The investigation was it remains justified in not "nutty." Finally, in anticipation of the author's defense of his investigation on the grounds that it exposes Obama's lies, I suggested at the foot of the reply that the investigation ought to be continued, under a different rationale, because it stands as a metaphor for the chicanery and radicalism of the individual.
The idea expressed by the author that the birthers are irrational is ignorant. Invariably these charges are accompanied by a declaration that Barack Obama has already produced his birth certificate and it shows that he was born in Hawaii in 1961. This, as we all know, is what Obama has not produced. He has produced not a Birth Certificate but a Certification of Live Birth. The essence of the birthers position is that under Hawaii law a Certification of Live Birth could have been issued for Barack Obama even though his Kenyan birth certificate showed the location of his birth to be Kenya, so long as his mother averred that she was a resident of Hawaii for one year preceding the birth.
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 indeed 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. (The author recounts several reasons apart from foreign birth in his article.)
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 many do, 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?
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Brace yourself: I agree with you!
I have seen the article posted some time ago here on Free Republic: Clearing the Smoke on Obama’s Eligibility: An Intelligence Investigator’s June 10 Report ( http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2303258/posts) which makes it clear that his mother, or even his grandparents, could have secured a birth certificate merely on the filing of an affidavit or perhaps even only an application. Evidently, his mother could have presented a drivers license which she evidently had or even as little as a telephone bill to show proof of residency, simply averring that her son was born there in Hawaii, and she would have received a Hawaiian birth certificate. The article cited goes on to describe three other methods by which a fraudulent certificate for Barack Obama could have been obtained in 1961 in Hawaii.
More, the author continues to the effect that Stanley Ann Obama would have been motivated to do so because her son was not entitled to citizenship under the existing statute if he were born abroad with only one parent a citizen who had not lived five years after the age of 14 in America.
Therefore, it is possible that when Doctor Fukino examined the "vital records" she saw an application or affidavit that said that the baby was born in Hawaii and she saw the Birth Certificate that was issued as a result which would also show birth in Hawaii. She saw nothing indicating a foreign birth in the file and therefore she could quite properly say that the vital records show birth in Hawaii. Indeed, to say anything else would be to venture a fact which appeared nowhere in the record.
While I take issue with your well reasoned and articulate perspective on the motivations of Doctor Fukino-I come to exactly the opposite conclusions-I am compelled to agree that there is still plenty of room to maintain that, in the absence of the original birth certificate and supporting documents, if any, the matter remains open. That is not to say that the probabilities are for a foreign birth, merely that it is not illogical to maintain that a foreign birth is quite consistent with the facts as we know them, the Certification of Live Birth, the procedures and regulations in place in Hawaii in 1961, and two statements of Doctor Fukino.
I think we probably both can agree that we will find nothing in the file which shows foreign birth. We might also find nothing in the file apart from the Obama family's self serving declarations which show a domestic birth-and perhaps not even such declarations. That would leave the ball where it is but that is a defeat for us. We have the burden to move it across the goal line. Even if the original birth certificate were released and it was revealed that it was based on family affidavits, we lose. We need extrinsic evidence of foreign birth.
