By As everyone has probably heard the birth certificate issue had a major development yesterday when President Obama produced his long form birth certificate. As I have state repeatedly on this blog there is no way that he wasn’t born in Hawaii because besides the certificate of live birth he already produced his birth was announced not in one but two local papers and the Republican governor of Hawaii said that she verified his birth paperwork and confirmed President Obama was born in Hawaii. That wasn’t good enough for some people who had wild conspiracies of how the President was really born in Kenya. The only reasons the President wouldn’t release the long form birth certificate because it obviously wasn’t that hard to do, had to be either for political reasons to make opponents look like nutters or that there was something inconsistent on the long form. Well now that we have seen the long form we now know that it had to be for political reasons that the long form wasn’t released a long time ago because there is absolutely nothing unusual on the long form.
The only thing I found mildly interesting was the way the long form was scanned on the PDF to where someone can say it looks fake and I wonder if it was intentional to keep the nutter conspiracy theorists going? It is useful politically to keep your opponents on their heels by responding to claims on whether they are a nutty birther or not. It seems now as well that anyone that continues to be a birther will be labeled a racist:
So what’s fueling the dogged questioning of Obama’s origins? Many critics of the birther movement say its core tenets–and its stubborn resistance to evidence disproving those beliefs–can be traced to racial hostilities. The fundamental birtherist conviction, these critics say, is that an African-American can’t have legitimately won the presidency–and that his elevation to power therefore has to be the result of an elaborate subterfuge.
“There is a real deep-seated and vicious racism at work here in terms of trying to de-legitimate the president,” Peniel Joseph, a professor of history at Tufts University, told The Ticket.
“This is more than just a conspiracy,” Peniel added. “I think this is fundamentally connected to white supremacism in this country.”
Miami Herald columnist Leonard Pitts Jr. in early April called for the connection to be publicly drawn between birthers and racism: “So it is time to call this birther nonsense what it is–not just claptrap, but profoundly racist claptrap.”
And columnist Michael Tomasky wrote for The Guardian Wednesday that the birther conspiracy “had to be the only explanation for how this black man got to the White House.” He added: “And if you think race isn’t what this is about at its core, ask yourself if there would even be a birther conspiracy if Barack Obama were white and named Bart Oberstar. If you think there would be, you are delusional.”
In a similar vein, Rev. Jesse Jackson told Politico yesterday that Donald Trump’s campaign to get Obama to release his birth certificate is deeply rooted in race.
“Any discussion of [Obama's] birthplace is a code word,” Jackson said. “It calls upon ancient racial fears.” Jackson later added that, in his view, Trump “is now tapping into code-word fears that go far beyond a rational discourse.” [Yahoo News]
With the release of the long form birth certificate President Obama’s political opponents are now asking for more background documentation from him like his college transcripts. Any such demands now will probably be labeled with racist intent. This all sounds like the first rhetoric for the 2012 Presidential election campaign to me. Remember back in 2004 anyone that criticized former President Bush was “unpatriotic” and now with President Obama the people that criticize him will be labeled as racist. On the flip side it appears the rhetoric of President Obama’s opponents will be that he is “un-American” whatever being un-American means. I’m still waiting for that definition. So just think we will likely have a campaign season of “racist” and “un-American” accusations to look forward to next year; is it any wonder why I have such a low opinion of American politics?
1:33 am on April 28th, 2011 1
Here is the problem.
Obama has NOT really released his long-form birth certificate.
Obama has release a PDF file… a format that is a very abstract representation of any document it encodes.
It inherently makes scrutiny difficult… having artifacts and features which can both hide and suggest manipulation.
This was intentional, of course… to shift attention to a non-issue.
There are high-resolution formats specifically designed to accurately archive documents for detailed academic study… but these were purposely not used.
All this really shows is that Obama is just another funkstick pulling the same old crap that the government increasingly likes to do…
…make the small truths so suspicious and hard to verify that big lies can easily be mixed in without looking much different.
In reality, this is likely a murky-yet-real representation of his birth certificate… as there would be a reliance on too many not-necessarily-on-the-program people to keep all the aspects of such a conspiracy under wraps.
And, if it wasn't on the level, even the highest-resolution fake would pass levels of scrutiny that Bubba Wingnut with his downloaded copy of Photoshop is unlikely to achieve.
The real question is… what is Obama trying to keep attention focused away from by intentionally dragging out the birth certificate issue?
This issue should be dropped as there will not be any straight answer.
And then the goalposts should be moved back.
The birth certificate should be just the first step in a long list of documents that should become public record…
…as it is hardly unreasonable for the voters and followers of the most powerful man in the world to have some idea of his history, abilities, and values… which, strangely, Americans have shockingly little idea of… and, based on his actions and policies, he seems much more like a continuation of big business/military/Wall Street-hooking-up Bush than the Hope and Change socialist he was selling himself as.
From grades to written papers, wanting to know the historical thinking of the man running the country is neither racist nor politically partisan… it is responsible citizenship…
…and it is especially important when so many of his simple actions seem to diverge from traditional American culture, traditions, and values.
And it is even more important with the increasing distrust Americans have of their government and the increasing hostility the government has for its citizens.
By further dividing and polarizing the nation with the intentionally shady release of a suspect document with moral high ground claims that it has all been cleared up, I have lost all respect for Obama as anything more than a self-serving puppet with no respect for the country or its people.
May he serve only one term and spend the rest of his days as a marginalized Carteresque object of ridicule and disdain.
I wish him nothing but ill.
1:33 am on April 28th, 2011 2
Here is the problem.
Obama has NOT really released his long-form birth certificate.
Obama has release a PDF file… a format that is a very abstract representation of any document it encodes.
It inherently makes scrutiny difficult… having artifacts and features which can both hide and suggest manipulation.
This was intentional, of course… to shift attention to a non-issue.
There are high-resolution formats specifically designed to accurately archive documents for detailed academic study… but these were purposely not used.
All this really shows is that Obama is just another funkstick pulling the same old crap that the government increasingly likes to do…
…make the small truths so suspicious and hard to verify that big lies can easily be mixed in without looking much different.
In reality, this is likely a murky-yet-real representation of his birth certificate… as there would be a reliance on too many not-necessarily-on-the-program people to keep all the aspects of such a conspiracy under wraps.
And, if it wasn't on the level, even the highest-resolution fake would pass levels of scrutiny that Bubba Wingnut with his downloaded copy of Photoshop is unlikely to achieve.
The real question is… what is Obama trying to keep attention focused away from by intentionally dragging out the birth certificate issue?
This issue should be dropped as there will not be any straight answer.
And then the goalposts should be moved back.
The birth certificate should be just the first step in a long list of documents that should become public record…
…as it is hardly unreasonable for the voters and followers of the most powerful man in the world to have some idea of his history, abilities, and values… which, strangely, Americans have shockingly little idea of… and, based on his actions and policies, he seems much more like a continuation of big business/military/Wall Street-hooking-up Bush than the Hope and Change sociialist he was selling himself as.
From grades to written papers, wanting to know the historical thinking of the man running the country is neither racist nor politically partisan… it is responsible citizenship…
…and it is especially important when so many of his simple actions seem to diverge from traditional American culture, traditions, and values.
And it is even more important with the increasing distrust Americans have of their government and the increasing hostility the government has for its citizens.
By further dividing and polarizing the nation with the intentionally shady release of a suspect document with moral high ground claims that it has all been cleared up, I have lost all respect for Obama as anything more than a self-serving puppet with no respect for the country or its people.
May he serve only one term and spend the rest of his days as a marginalized Carteresque object of ridicule and disdain.
I wish him nothing but ill.
1:49 am on April 28th, 2011 3
Here you go GI Korea. You're being a good Liberal! Keep them talking about the BC.
No. lets talk about the most "transparent" administration in American History
Or Obama being a Racist, as shown by the need for the "beer summit".
Muslim ties maybe.
His distribution of wealth shown by giving millions to a South american country to drill for oil while refusing to allow drilling in the gulf and providing for americans to get jobs.
His canceling of the Orion Program, causing America to pay Russia Millions per astronaut for a ride to the ISS and further lose of high tech jobs.
Nope. Be a good Liberal GI KOREA. Keep the subject about the BC.
2:20 am on April 28th, 2011 4
"…and it is especially important when so many of his simple actions seem to diverge from traditional American culture, traditions, and values."
such as…?
2:22 am on April 28th, 2011 5
http://www.monster-island.net/2011/04/newly-relea…
Read this nonsense. I used to really like and respect the Kushibo blog, but this crap falls well beneath what I've come to expect.
2:29 am on April 28th, 2011 6
Basically, Obama is a SOCIALIIST. He has no love for America. He apologised to any country that would listen.
But no. Lets talk about the BC, that he Finally revealed. Only took him three years.
Everyone wanted to shut up about it. Stop asking about it. It doesn't matter.
NOW, those same people want to talk about it.
Like I didn't see that coming.
4:09 am on April 28th, 2011 7
Only "racists" ask about birth certificates anyway, eh Retired GI? Only "racists" favor Capitalism over slavery, too I guess…
5:58 am on April 28th, 2011 8
The only thing that I hope comes out of this peculiarly American farce is that it inflames the bat-shit crazy birthers to even more ludicrous extremes. That will ensure Obama's re-election.
5:58 am on April 28th, 2011 9
Nobody wrote:
Huh? You do realize it's meant to be satire, right? (And if you don't, the onus may be on me, not you, so don't take that as bashing.)
Or do you mean that it's really bad satire?
8:33 am on April 28th, 2011 10
"The real question is… what is Obama trying to keep attention focused away from by intentionally dragging out the birth certificate issue?"
Are you serious?? Talk about damned if you do and damned if you don't! You really believe it's been Obama that has been dragging this non-issue out?
"Obama has release a PDF file… a format that is a very abstract representation of any document it encodes."
The format? At some point people just need to swallow their pride, and say they were wrong, and their suspicions were unjustified. But the racisim mountain is insurmountable, and people will find any issue in attempt to delegitimize Obama's presidency for the simple fact he is black. Are all the birthers folks racist? I would say of of course not. Are the people who are still calling to doubt POTUS citzenship after he released his birth certificate racist? I would say yes. What else could be? How could otherwise intelligent people purposefully remain so dense?
8:39 am on April 28th, 2011 11
#9 I gave an off the cuff list above.
8:55 am on April 28th, 2011 12
#6, Please be more plain spoken.
As I was referring to Obama being a Racist, and he is not asking about his BC.
Since you brought it up, I am very much Pro-Capitalism. Most Retired Military are! I'm also pro 2nd amendment and own just a few, if that was your next question.
Obama displayed a long form. Is it "real"? I have no way to know, so I'm satisfied.
Now, what were you talking about?
9:18 am on April 28th, 2011 13
This reminds me of a song. Come on, everybody gather 'round and hold hands.
You think we look pretty good together
You think my shoes are made of leather
But I'm a substitute for another guy
I look pretty tall but my heels are high
The simple things you see are all complicated
I look pretty young, but I'm just back-dated, yeah
Substitute your lies for fact
I can see right through your plastic mac
I look all white, but my dad was black
My fine looking suit is really made out of sack
I was born with a plastic spoon in my mouth
The north side of my town faced east, and the east was facing south
And now you dare to look me in the eye
Those crocodile tears are what you cry
It's a genuine problem, you won't try
To work it out at all you just pass it by, pass it by
Substitute me for him
Substitute my coke for gin
Substitute you for my mum
At least I'll get my washing done
9:44 am on April 28th, 2011 14
Maj. America wrote:
Your first mistake is assuming they're otherwise intelligent.
No, but seriously, I think it is wrong-headed and unfair to categorically label birthers as racists.
While there are no doubt some birthers who are racist — as there would be with any group, including Obama supporters — and there are probably some for whom their birther views are indeed motivated by bigotry or racism, it is patently unfair to say that if someone is a birther they must be motivated by racism.
Some are driven by a genuine concern that the wool is being pulled over everyone's eyes, while some feel that the birther movement is the greatest hope for removing what they feel is a terrible president, and some feel that Constitutional checks are being followed. None of these views requires a racist mindset.
It weakens your viewpoint to cry racism in response to the latest claims or skepticism by the birther movement.
10:25 am on April 28th, 2011 15
"The only thing I found mildly interesting was the way the long form was scanned on the PDF to where someone can say it looks fake and I wonder if it was intentional to keep the nutter conspiracy theorists going? "
Of course he's not going to release a picture of the original. It's his "Trump card".
"With the release of the long form birth certificate President Obama’s political opponents are now asking for more background documentation from him like his college transcripts."
Anti-intellectual nonsense. Even if he had a hard time adjusting to university, and I don't know that's the case, what counts most is his performance in his senior year. I know this all too well. I wasn't a model student while I did my undergraduate studies. Being a gifted kid, I had never needed to crack open a book in order to get excellent grades…until I went to university, that is. I simply didn't know how to study since before then I could always rely on my ability to recall everything that was said in class to perform well on tests. My first two years were disastrous, but once I got into the groove, I got good grades. I eventually completed my graduate studies with honors.
11:07 am on April 28th, 2011 16
@14
Anti-intellectual nonsense+a splash of racism= the birther issue.
12:14 pm on April 28th, 2011 17
Seeing as we've already had previous Presidents born outside the USA (in London actually) to American parents, the "birther" craze never had any ground to being with. Even if PoTUS Obama was born in Kenya, his mother is an American Citizen and thus he is a natural born US Citizen and eligible to run for the office of PoTUS.
The only difference between PoTUS Obama and previous Presidents is that one of his parents was black and not a US citizen. That's right, Obama is ~half~ black and ~half~ white folks. He's just as much white as he is black, go figure that the racists would focus just on one parent while conveniently forgetting the other.
I rarely throw out the race card, but its become obvious that's whats going on.
1:15 pm on April 28th, 2011 18
someotherguy, who was born in London?
I know Mitt Romney was born in Mexico, and McCain was born in Panama, but who was born in London?
Chester A. Arthur is the closest we have to this situation: he was rumored to have been born in Canada, and his father actually was NOT a US citizen when Chesty Soetoro was born (he was naturalized about fourteen years later).
Some say that Arthur actively hid this fact, but when the truth "came out" (if it was actually hidden in the first place) there was no legal effort to undo or retroactively cancel or whatever the Arthur administration.
1:24 pm on April 28th, 2011 19
It's not about foreign parents.
Andrew Jackson (1829-1837) is the only president born of two immigrants, both Irish. Presidents with one immigrant parent are Thomas Jefferson (1801-1809), whose mother was born in England, James Buchanan (1857-1861) and Chester Arthur (1881-1885), both of whom had Irish fathers, and Woodrow Wilson (1913-1921) and Herbert Hoover (1929-1933), whose mothers were born respectively in England and Canada.
Born in the US or what would be considered US soil. I believe there are other allowances.
1:35 pm on April 28th, 2011 20
In the case of McCain: The U.S. Foreign Affairs Manual states that children born in the Panama Canal Zone at certain times became U.S. nationals without citizenship. It also states in general that "it has never been determined definitively by a court whether a person who acquired U.S. citizenship by birth abroad to U.S. citizens is a natural-born citizen […]". In Rogers v. Bellei the Supreme Court only ruled that "children born abroad of Americans are not citizens within the citizenship clause of the 14th Amendment", and didn't elaborate on the natural-born status.
Once again, out of over 300 million citizens, these were the best two choices we could come up with?
1:38 pm on April 28th, 2011 21
Leon LaPorte, I think that the Constitution stipulates that those who were citizens at the time the Constitution was ratified (e.g., Andrew Jackson and Thomas Jefferson) would be eligible to be president, so their parents' foreignness is immaterial.
As for Buchanan, was his Irish father still a British (?) subject in 1791, when little Buchanan was born? He came to the US in 1783, and may have gotten US citizenship in the meantime.
You say it's not about foreign parents, but the birther movement certainly believes it is, citing certain definitions of "natural born citizen" that suggest it is different from "native-born citizen" and one does not have it unless (depending on definition) both one's parents were US citizens when you were born or at least your father was a US citizen when you were born.
Thus, as I've read, some birthers claim victory as this new certificate of birth (just like the certification of live birth) proves that Obama's dad was a British subject and not a US citizen, ergo no matter where he was born, Barry Soetoro Obama is not a natural born citizen. Had he actually been the child of a certain Marxist in Chicago, however, then he'd be a natural born citizen, but his birth certificate would say "Marxist Muslim."
Two other issues that go to eligibility but are not answered by this release: Barack Obama supposedly became Barry Soetoro when he was adopted as a kid and that adoption negated his natural born citizenship.
And/or he took a trip to Pakistan where Americans were not allowed to go and that means he lost his US citizenship or never had it or had dual citizenship.
4:07 pm on April 28th, 2011 22
Chickenhead,
So publicly releasing a document in the most widely available public viewing format is somehow some kind of massive scheme to hoodwink the country? I’m not saying the release isn’t politically motivated, but still I think you’re taking things too far. Also as far as your “full-disclosure” request goes, have you ever espoused the need for other politicians? Did you ask for your Governor’s school records? Did you ask for Bush’s final paper from Poly Sci 101 at Yale? If not then the question has to be why now with this President? If so, then I’ll just consider you to be an thorough citizen.
Retired GI,
As to your points, I fail to see how they can make any connections to the claims your making.
So the “beer summit” is racist? Only white people like beer?
Disallowing the creation of more UNMANNED oil rigs in the Gulf hurts jobs (notice the caps word there, also note that building these things is almost always contracted out to foreign firms).
Also, by the way, the recent focus on the privatization (which for the record is the opposite of Socialism) has created more jobs in the space related industries than when it was handled by the government alone.
“Muslim ties maybe” I don’t even want to make that worth a response, what about your (I’m guessing) “Christian ties maybe”, just try to remember both sides have extremists. Thanks for your service to our country in the past, but please take a careful look at your mindset.
4:12 pm on April 28th, 2011 23
Kushibo,
"Barack Obama supposedly became Barry Soetoro when he was adopted as a kid and that adoption negated his natural born citizenship. "
An American citizenship is (rightfully) not an easy thing to lose… especially for a child unable to make decisions for themselves.
"And/or he took a trip to Pakistan where Americans were not allowed to go and that means he lost his US citizenship or never had it or had dual citizenship."
Americans could go to Pakistan on American passports at that time. This is only an issue because nobody bothers to spend 10 minutes checking out the story.
Dual citizenship could be an issue… not for presidential eligibility but as yet another point for the voting public to gauge the loyalties, intentions, and values of the man they elect to run the nation.
Behind all the smoke and mirrors of partisan politics, ideological battles, and false cries of racism, the reality is that Obama ran a successful campaign based entirely on emotion… and very little is really known about him and the values that guide his goals and decisions that affect 300 million American citizens.
Obama was almost certainly born in Hawaii, is an American citizen through his mother, and is completely eligible to be the president of the United States.
But, despite all the promises of Hope, Change, and Open Government, NONE of those things have happened… and, from continuation of Bush policy to personal secrecy, Obama has led all of them by example.
Perhaps, if more were known about him, everyone would have seen this coming.
The birth certificate is just the first step in a larger issue of demanding honesty, openness, and accountability in a government that is increasingly dishonest, secretive, and unaccountable… and it is very fitting to start with the president who promised all those things to get elected.
Sadly, this is all coming several years too late.
One more thing… it MIGHT be a very bad thing for Obama to be found ineligible… as the following political fight would strain and scar the nation in unimaginable ways.
It is likely better to block Obama and his handlers from doing any more harm, vote him out of office at the next election, and let him fall into the dustbin of history with a legacy composed of a short-lived fake universal healthcare program, yet another pointless-yet-expensive war, and the unintentional creation of a third political party which will counter liberal, leftist and progressive interests for years to come.
Forget about the misdirections of racism and birthplace and rightfully demand the end of needless(?) secrecy about the man in control of the most powerful nation the world has ever seen.
4:49 pm on April 28th, 2011 24
ChickenHead, you just skewered the two points I made about Obama's ineligibility, and then you go on to say that because of this fuzzy cloud surrounding Obama, he shouldn't be re-elected.
Okay, but the fuzzy cloud is essentially made up innuendo and empty accusations like that. Obama didn't release his birth record for the first time this week; he did so in 2008, well before the election. That a completely legal and accurate official document didn't satisfy his critics is not his fault. He did not create secrecy regarding that; his critics invented accusations of secrecy that didn't hold water.
Regarding his passports, that is something that stems from accusations that he holds an Indonesian passport, and unless an Indonesian passport is released, cannot be satisfied. A half-clever catch-22 invented by his detractors, which is again not his fault.
About his school records, I'm actually a bit confused by this one. Wouldn't his work at the Harvard Law Review be open?
Well, a quick check with my own student access to other periodicals reviews that YES, he is. Here, for example is the fine print from the December 1990 issue of the Harvard Law Review:
This is a PDF of a printed page (it's not a font, but it has been detectable by OCR).
Yet we have Trump saying now he didn't go:
Obama is not responsible for this; it's the idiot detractors who refuse to trust what's right in front of their eyes. But your suggestion that Obama be ousted is simply rewarding the persistence of willing fools.
5:14 pm on April 28th, 2011 25
HERE are snapshots of the Harvard Law Review in question.
5:30 pm on April 28th, 2011 26
I am glad that the President FINALLY released his long form BC. As I've written before I have always believed that he was an American citizen because of the Hawaiian newspaper birth announcements but if there was any doubt then this should settle the matter. In other words it's over. Would the folks who think that this is a racial thing, would you please give some EVIDENCE? Just because some liberal talking heads think that it is racist does not make it so. Because the bc thing went to the heart of our republic-is the man that we as a people elected as our president eligible for the office? The interest in President Obama's college transcripts has nothing to do with his eligibility for the office so quite frankly I don't give a foxtrot. Kushibo #17, I have read the same thing about Chester A. Arthur but this has never been proven so the presumption must remain that President Arthur was a citizen. The same thing applies to President Obama. Senator McCain was NOT born in Panama, he was born in the Panama Canal Zone which was American property (we even had deeds to the property).
5:52 pm on April 28th, 2011 27
I had always thought of PCZ as "United States territory" that was sovereign territory of the United States, but way back around 2000 I read some critics of McCain explaining legally why PCZ was not US territory in the same way Guam, Puerto Rico, CNMI, or the Virgin Island were. It was, they were suggesting, more like Guantanamo.
But perhaps their interpretation was self-serving. Its status did necessitate a bill way back when to specifically declare people born there as native-born US citizens (or something like that), so it seemed there was some there there.
But McCain's natural born citizen status, if it was ever in doubt, was made crystal clear by the US Senate, so that's a complete non-issue to me. I didn't mean anything by it by referring to PCZ as Panama, which it is today, and some say was before.
I like John McCain. I think we wouldn't have ended up in so many problems we have now had he won the 2000 primary instead of Cheney's puppet.
6:00 pm on April 28th, 2011 28
Kushibo #25, If John McCain had won the election & been swore in as president & his critics had challenged his eligibility to be president for the reasons that you wrote about; I wonder if we would be calling John McCains critics "birthers"?
6:13 pm on April 28th, 2011 29
I don't think they'd exist. The biggest opponents to McCain were the people trying to get Bush43 elected.
They were vicious, so if they're illegitimate-Black-baby tactics hadn't worked, they might have gone on to birther-esque nonsense (I was glad that when he was seeking the nomination in 2008 that it was dealt with rather quickly and painlessly).
I also remember listening to Rush Limbaugh go after McCain (on AFRTS) on a daily basis. He was depicted as crazy and irrational because he was a POW, etc.
Man, that never sat well with me. I never served in uniform, but here were a bunch of people who sat out the Vietnam War in various capacities using McCain's heroic POW status as a club to beat him over the head with and destroy his political ambitions. Disgusting.
Now I'm pissed off all over again. Need some JibJab satire.
6:17 pm on April 28th, 2011 30
Here's another one. Not as classic as that classic, but more timely.
8:13 pm on April 28th, 2011 31
"You really believe it’s been Obama that has been dragging this non-issue out?"
Sure as can be.
If he'd handed over hard copies of his birth certificate when Clinton brought the issue up, it would have been dead.
McCain's citzenship due to birth was brought up and he settled it, and nobody labelled the people making the issue racists. But McCain must be white…
Plenty of other recent presidents had their academic and health and other records demanded by the press and orgs and they were handed over or hounded until they relented. Of course, pretty much all of those leading candidates were white – so again – those demanding the documents were not racists…
On the pdf form – surely there was a more transparent way to do this – to make the certificate public. A hard copy was generated and could have been made available instead of scanned and posted.
Digitizing the document was bound to keep the conspiracy theories churning. I'm not convinced that that was the point, but it is a plausible reason why they chose to disclose the document the way they have.
8:25 pm on April 28th, 2011 32
usinkorea, a few points.
He not only released an electronic image of the legally obtained (and prima facie legal evidence) certification of live birth, which is what Hawaii issues for these purposes, during the primaries in 2008, but he also released hard copies to some media outlets for them to peruse and verify (see 2008 link above).
And again, with this long form, while you are looking at the PDF originally posted to the whitehouse.gov site, some of the White House press corps were given the documents Obama's team received from Honolulu to touch and verify.
Or are you saying that you specifically should be able to touch it?
All of these document issuances, by the way, have been vouched for publicly by the issuing authority in Hawaii.
McCain's issue, by the way, was settled mostly because other Senators voted affirmation of his natural born citizen status into a resolution. It had nothing to do with his birth certificate.
Maybe they should do the same for Obama, now that his long-form has also been released.
As for the transcripts, here's a sincere question for anyone who might be able to answer: Can you provide a link to the transcripts of Bush43 and Clinton (our other two baby boomer presidents) and/or to Bush41, Reagan, and Carter? I have a feeling (but don't know for sure) that this "release your transcripts!" is at best an inconsistent standard that is actually a fishing expedition.
10:42 pm on April 28th, 2011 33
Kushibo you can read Bush's transcripts at the link. He was just an okay student at Yale and John Kerry ended up releasing his transcripts as well back in 2004 and it showed that he was an average student at Yale just like Bush. Al Gore likewise had average grades at Harvard though he did score well on the SAT. So yes plenty of other politicians running for President have showed their college transcripts.
I think it is likely that President Obama was not a great student at Occidental and probably got better at Columbia and then began excelling at Harvard. Some people grow into being better students which I don't see a problem with. I think the biggest issue he doesn't want to deal with though is the whole affirmative action questions if in fact his grades were low.
11:02 pm on April 28th, 2011 34
Obama and his apparatchiks are FOS, and are an existential threat to the Republic. Anyone who believes anything these inveterate deceivers utter swallows lies from hell and will suffer the consequences. These Marxist socialists focus only on securing power, at the expense of anyone and everyone, and to blazes with American society, values, history, tradition, economy, foreign policy, etc., as they seek to “fundamentally transform” America. The ends they seek justify the means they employ, including their deliberate, continuous stoking of the birther fires – they cannot be trusted at all, in or out of sight. BEWARE!!
11:09 pm on April 28th, 2011 35
Re: #8,
Kushibo,
I did miss that it was satire. Oops. Thank you, I feel better now. Sorry to have doubted you.
11:11 pm on April 28th, 2011 36
Nobodt is sorry to have doubted Kushibo. Nobody thanks Kushibo. Poor Kushibo…
2:41 am on April 29th, 2011 37
31
I don't particulary care much about Obama's grades, but it does make more of a difference with him because one of the core selling points of him as a largely unknown senator was that he was a genius.
Even back with Kerry, he took more of a knock about his grades, when it was discovered they were similar to Bush's, because Kerry had been billed as so much more intelligent and intellectual than Bush.
But, and it is a huge but, Kerry had a very long track record as a senator to judge by. Bush had his tenure as governor.
I think it does say something positive about Obama that he graduated from Columbia and then Harvard. I also thought it said something positive that Bush graduated from Yale and Harvard.
My years in graduate school, however, severly broke me from the delusion that going higher and higher in higher educations means you are smarter than the average man. (And boy could you run wild with that statement…)
3:21 am on April 29th, 2011 38
The breathless stupidity of usinkorea is really something to marvel at. There are simply too many to enumerate from his last two comments, so let me just pick a few choice examples and send out a gust of sanity in turn:
1)If he’d (Obama) handed over hard copies of his birth certificate when Clinton brought the issue up, it would have been dead.
Errr, NO. The reason why Obama never followed usinkorea's admonitions are for this reason apropos Mark Twain: "Never argue with a fool, as onlookers might not be able to tell the difference.”
2)I don’t particulary (sic) care much about Obama’s grades, but it does make more of a difference with him because one of the core selling points of him as a largely unknown senator was that he was a genius.
Okay, let us for moment accept the assertion that a core selling point was that Obama was a genius. Even with that being the case, I don't see how knowing his undergraduate and graduate school grades add anything more useful or meaningful to that core selling point. He graduate magnum cum laude and took the top post at the Harvard Law Review. Those two say enough about his academic abilities or-if you will-his "genius."
3)I think it does say something positive about Obama that he graduated from Columbia and then Harvard. I also thought it said something positive that Bush graduated from Yale and Harvard.
Okay, without denigrating Bush,(For the record, I was never one of those people who that he was an out of his league dunce), Bush going to Yale and then Harvard really doesn't compare with Obama going to Occidental, then Columbia, then Harvard Law. To recap some very basic information that eludes or is willfully ignored by usinkorea: Bush is the scion of wealth and privilege, Obama is not. It is much, much easier to get into elite institutions of higher learning when you have a grandfather and father who were alums of an institution you got admitted to (Yale) as well as being prominent politicians.
Finally, let's consider usinkorea's online tag. What proof do we have that usinkorea has the right to use the online tag "usinkorea?" I'd like to see his long form birth certificate that proves he's the bonafide American he says is to call himself usinkorea. If you care to prove your national provenances, "usinkorea," it would be appreciated if you showed us your long form birth certificate in a non-PDF format. You know, so that we don't keep any doubts still "churning."
3:26 am on April 29th, 2011 39
Oh, just one more nugget that needs addressing. usinkorea states that: "My years in graduate school, however, severly broke me from the delusion that going higher and higher in higher educations means you are smarter than the average man."
usinkorea had to go graduate school to realize that? We all learn at our own pace I guess.
3:50 am on April 29th, 2011 40
Nobody wrote:
Whew. For a moment there I was worried it was bad satired.
Well, maybe it is.
setnaffa wrote:
LOL
4:16 am on April 29th, 2011 41
GI Korea wrote:
Hold on now. Did they show them or did someone else reveal them? There's a world of difference there, and the embarrassment caused to Bush43 and Al Gore at being mediocre students in the Ivy League, both silver-spoon legacy admissions, was bristling.
These things do not occur in a vacuum, and it prompted candidate Hillary Clinton to keep her own records very well guarded. Indeed, what the Grand Opposition Fishing Expedition Researchers™ (GOFERs) were doing was looking for things she'd written — like a senior thesis — that might reveal she was an enthusiastically budding Marxist at the age of twenty-two.
That's what GOFERs do: They dig and dig and dig until they find something juicy or until they've just undermined the opponent's foundation with niggling little nothings.
They did the same with McCain in 2000, demanding health records in the hopes it would reveal he was crazy, or that there might be something in there that might make him look like he was crazy, while their supporters on the radio ran segments that depicted McCain as crazy. (See above for my disdain of chickenhawks attacking war veterans who were POWs.)
I think that's what they're hoping to do with Obama's paper trail at Occidental and Columbia and Yale. They've already started with the innuendo — Did he actually go, cuz no one there remembers him? What subterfuge was used so he'd get accepted? Was he on a foreign student scholarship? — and that's what this is really about. How much do you have to play by their rules? I'd simply point out that much of his academic work is already available, and it answers the question they purport to be asking, not the ones they're really after.
(The same was true of the birth certificate release, which they'd hoped would reveal embarrassing secrets, like his dad being someone else or him being listed as a Muslim. The perfectly legal COLB didn't show that, so they went after the long form, and that revealed nothing as well, which is why we're moving on to transcripts.)
The notion that usinkorea describes, that people voted for him because he was supposed to be a genius, doesn't ring true. It was a long, tough primary season, and the people who voted in the primaries were listening carefully to both sides. I talked with a lot of people who voted, and all chose to vote for him or against him because of policy stands of Hillary or Obama, not because of feeling. I may listen to speeches and read up on policies more than most, but my decision to vote for someone else was based on Obama's policy stands on certain issues, something I knew about because there were obviously a lot of substantive readings and speeches on his policies.
If you really believe the narrative that Obama got hired simply because he was billed by the media as a genius, I suspect you're listening to programs or reading sites that routinely sum up his pre-politics career as "community organizer." Am I close to the mark there? (He was actually a law professor for twelve years, and an occasionally practicing attorney, as well as being politically active in some groups that deserve probably a better description than "community organizer." He was then in legislative politics for about eight years.)
Finally, another thing to recognize about Obama was that, like Bush43 and Gore, he may very well have gotten into Harvard with average grades at Columbia because Obama, too, may have been deemed a legacy admission. After all, his alumnus father graduated from Harvard a quarter century earlier and went onto national service in Kenya. (Legacy admissions, for those who don't know, are affirmative action for kids of the rich and elite.)
By the way, the Bush site you linked to was a parody site, though the transcript appears to be real.
4:26 am on April 29th, 2011 42
"In the places where there is no transparency, corruption flourishes."
- Me, 2011
Would you dunces stop yapping about the intentionally murky birth certificate and start demanding the openness in government that Obama promised as a candidate.
4:37 am on April 29th, 2011 43
CH, not a disagreement in any way, but is there something specific (an issue, an area where openness is lacking, etc.) that you can refer to as an example?
6:37 am on April 29th, 2011 44
What about the promise to put every bill on the internet before he signed it? He has been more cloistered than Howard Hughes…
6:46 am on April 29th, 2011 45
setnaffa, do you have a link to what you're talking about? I'd like to confirm or refute it, and that would be easier if I know more precisely what he said and what he has or has not done to achieve that.
Not to say I don't believe you, but Reagan taught me to trust but verify.
9:25 am on April 29th, 2011 46
Promises: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o5t8GdxFYBU
Remember the Healthcare bill? Lobbyists are making more active than before. Earmarks are not gone. Meetings are more secret. The Healthcare bill was not online for 5 days. The meetings were not on CSPAN. Etc.
He's gotten far less open and transparent. And unlike the baryard animals in Orwell's Animal Farm, we have the Internet and nothing is ever really forgotten…
9:29 am on April 29th, 2011 47
And we won't even go into him being more like Bush than Bush in Iraq and Afghanistan–and even starting a new war with Libya, a nation that was harming no one outside it's own borders…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aryTu4ZlhZc
9:36 am on April 29th, 2011 48
I'll watch the YouTube stuff later. I agree that the health care process should have been more open, but frankly, I'm not terribly disappointed that it got through and I think, like Dennis Hassert said, the goal should be on tweaking what's wrong with it instead of repealing it.
As for Libya, I'm a bit baffled why people who thought nothing of going into a major, major invasion and war in Iraq when we still hadn't finished the job in Afghanistan, are so alarmed that Obama has been flying planes over Ghadaffi's forces to prevent rebels and civilians from being wiped out. If we are really at war, it's a very small war compared to what Bush was doing, but no one seemed to be bothered by that.
1:15 pm on April 29th, 2011 49
Part of the problem of both sides of the Libya-Iraq-Egypt-Afghanistan-Syria argument is that we have looked at Iraq and Afghanistan through the same glasses as we did Korea, Vietnam, WWII, etc…
They are not separate wars – it's one war (fought against non-state actors with some hostile states supporting the non-state actors) on several fronts. The key is deciding where and when you as the CINC are going to commit assets- and what it is you intend on achieving.
Looking across the spectrum of warfare, part of it's being fought right here amongst us discussing it.
1:21 pm on April 29th, 2011 50
38: Before starting on Kushibo's entry, I will say this much. The State Bar of Texas required me to submit my long form birth certificate before I could get a license to give people (usually) mundane legal advice. Given that, I have no use for a person seeking the most powerful political office in the solar system who whines about releasing the same sort of document.
Now as to the genius issue, I would take great caution in relying on the circle of people with whom you discussed The Messiah during the election. Obama supporters I talked to all told me (through their grape Kool-Aid stained mouths) about what a brilliant and highly qualified guy He was. So since many really did think Barry was a super-genius, the undergrad and graduate transcripts would be very useful to gauge this claim.
I really doubt Obama got much of a boost from being a legacy. By 1988 legacy selections were not exactly popular. My guess is Obama is a beneficiary of affirmative action. Before anyone says maybe Obama's grades were awesome enough for skin color to be irrelevant, we do know The Messiah did not graduate from Columbia cum laude. Another interesting thing would be to find out Obama's coursework and profs. Its common knowledge Obama associated with Marxists, terrorists and Marxist terrorists. I'm quite certain Barry gravitated towards hard left courses and teachers. The real gem would be if some Obama research paper of some sort surfaced. My gut feeling tells me such things were poorly written, filled with racial/class grievances and endorsing ideas any Soviet apparatchik would wholeheartedly approve.
One final point. I really doubt President Bush's transcripts surfaced in any way other than by him voluntarily turning them over. You can't just go up to a a college registrar's office and ask for someone else's transcripts. Also, these are not documents one just lays around loose.
1:40 pm on April 29th, 2011 51
Whining? He's released it several times since 2008.
Chris, what do Hawaii-born people submit to the Texas Bar? Except in rare, exceptional cases in which a decision is made to supersede regulations, it's the COLB that they are given, not the long form. Are people born in Hawaii just not allowed to practice law in Texas then?
As for Obama's genius. While it may be a fact people perceived, it is not the reason people voted for him or not. Don't confuse them saying, "Obama is really smart" with having "Obama is really smart" as the sole or primary reason for voting for him. The Democratic populace was quite divided between Hillary and Obama, and they were looking at a whole host of things.
My gut feeling is that, if they're released, they will be scrutinized and found to be as you said whether that view is warranted or not.
There's simultaneously a lot and very little that you can find out from a college transcript. I took a class in social stratification with a prof that is an avowed Marxist last semester. Does that make me an avowed Marxist? A Marxist at all? Would you know from that entry in my transcript that I actually defended the Tea Party movement in my class? Probably not, but I can assure you that were I to run, some in the Tea Party would use that course in the campaign against me.
In my graduate studies at Yonsei I took a class in Korean Criminology. You might be able to find out I wrote a term paper on crimes committed by US military personnel. What do those facts tell you? Not much, but I know someone could take that and spin a speculative story that would eventually be repeated as fact, even though it would almost certainly be wrong (the conclusion of my amateurish paper was that US military personnel crime, even if one counts the cases that do not receive much play in the Korean media, is lower than the Korean media coverage might suggest).
And there you said it about affirmative action. See, that's a stick you can beat Obama over the head with, but not Bush43, Gore, Kerry, etc. Obama's father was an Ivy League graduate, and if his grades really were that low (if!) that may have been the single greatest factor in him getting in: he's a legacy candidate. But even that will be twisted, right or wrong, into him having gotten in surely because of affirmative action.
The only recent president who sidesteps this altogether is Bill Clinton, an incredibly brilliant mind who worked hard to overcome his lower-class background to reach the Ivy League and Oxford (hmm… there actually may be an affirmative action thing at work there, too). And since they couldn't call him stupid, they had to pore over every aspect of his life until they found something else.
Maybe they should also demand Obama's arrest records, since he could have a felony background, like Bush43 and his drunk driving. Yeah, that's perfect: If he doesn't reveal his arrest record, then we'll know he's hiding something.
2:49 pm on April 29th, 2011 52
Kushibo, you are a typical lefty. You ask for proof and when you get it, you ignore it and change the subject.
In Iraq and Afghanistan, we are fighting al Qaeda or their proxies. In Libya, we're paying them…
Democrats loudly complained about Bush intervening in what they claimed was becoming a civil war in Iraq and Afghanistan. Now they stand apparently behind Obama's direct intervention in the Libyan Civil War.
Face it, claiming it's OK because Bush did it is just two-faced, lame, and well beneath someone of your education. And not likely to win many hearts and minds with the video that is widely available of Democrats calling Bush and our troops every name under the sun…
3:26 pm on April 29th, 2011 53
setnaffa, no I did not ignore it. I tend to take YouTube things and watch them later, regardless of content (I really dislike YouTube, and you'll rarely see me link to it), but at the same time I did acknowledge that health care should have been far more open. I don't think that's really ignoring what you're saying. Sorry if you feel that way. I did not vote for Obama (that makes me hardly a typical lefty).
Afghanistan was a morally imperative war. Iraq was elective. Even if we had to do it, we didn't have to do it then, when we were still vulnerable back in Afghanistan. So, no, Iraq not same-same with Libya.
As for "loudly complaining" about Afghanistan, that was widely supported by Democrats. They don't like that it became a quagmire, and support turned because of that, but most (including this "typical lefty") supported it. I was adamant about my support.
I also don't seem the unanimous support behind Obama in Libya, either.
But again, Libya and Iraq are not the same. Not in type, not in electiveness, and certainly not in scale, cost, or involvement. That right there makes a huge difference in what's okay.
Libya is closer to what Kosovo was. Iraq… no Dem in the last thirty or so years has gotten us into something like Iraq, so there's nothing to compare in terms of measuring complaint.
9:51 pm on April 29th, 2011 54
Here is a good read from the Daily Howler that Glans got me stuck on reading, that discusses the liberal media reaction to the birth certificate nonsense. He is pretty much spot on with his analysis.
10:11 pm on April 29th, 2011 55
Kushibo many of the Democrats proclaimed Afghanistan to be the "good war" during the campaign and then once Obama was elected they suddenly changed their tune and it became a rush to find a rationale to get US forces out of there. That is why when Obama announced his own troop surge in Afghanistan many Democrats were disappointed.
It is likewise with Libya many Democrats are unhappy with the Libya intervention but since it is there guy that is president they will just grumble to themselves instead of going bat sh** crazy if Bush did such a thing. Do you really think if Bush launched an attack against Iraq based on humanitarian reasons that Code Pink and the rest of the usual suspects would not be protesting outside the White House and making all their typical claims?
As far as starting wars the Democrats escalated Vietnam into a war of choice that was far more destructive to the country in the number of lives lost, the fact people had to be drafted, and the follow on social unrest back in the US it caused. To this day Vietnam still has a huge psychological effect in America that Iraq never will have.
30 years from now people may actually consider Iraq to have been a worthwhile venture if the country remains stabilized and continues to make both political and economical developments much like the Korean War is now thought of by most people to be a worthwhile cause which during the Korean War that was hardly the case. Truman couldn't even run for re-election because he was so unpopular because of how the war dragged out and cost so many lives.
8:50 am on April 30th, 2011 56
48:
Academic Transcripts: So let me see if I got this right. It is acceptable for Obama to not release his transcripts because there are probably inconvenient facts on them and opponents would make political hay over them to confuse the electorate? I have two words for this: so what? Obama, his cronies and their media allies have touted this guy as having God-like genius. Since they’ve made it an issue, academic transcripts are relevant. Besides that, its not like releasing such data is entirely unusual in our society. Also we live in a (mostly) free society. Obama and company have all sorts of resources available to counter criticism. Yeah, it is more efficient for Obama to keep this all off the table. But you know what? I really do not care what is convenient for Obama.
Birth Certificate Part Deux: I did not give the State Bar the Maryland equivalent of what Obama released in 2008. I gave it a copy like what The Messiah released a few days ago. The difference is I would not have been practicing law for the past 10 years had I not handed over a certified copy of my long form brith certificate while Barry has been holding down the position of CINC (and doing a horrible job at it) without having done the same.
4:50 pm on April 30th, 2011 57
Not a racial thing? Dude…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3cLxQ4B23_g&fe…
8:08 pm on April 30th, 2011 58
The Associated Press released a scanned copy, actually. What's truly funny is that despite this, self-professed experts are still trying to exploit the public's understanding of obscure technical knowledge, in this case PDF files and how they are produced, to try to convince people that the document is fake. There's even a video by a supposed expert who even admits that the Associated Press document is as legitimate, and points out why it is legitimate, but then ignores this to point out the supposed problems with the PDF file to suggest that Obama wasn't born in the US. Let people who fall for such moronic scams waste their vote on their Tea Baggers. You don't want the next president to owe them any favours.
8:09 pm on April 30th, 2011 59
Face it, he's American.
PS. I told you so.
8:13 pm on April 30th, 2011 60
Roads are subsidized, so is education, libraries, and healthcare (to some extent). Face it, the United States is far more socialiist than you are willing to admit.
8:14 pm on April 30th, 2011 61
It has. They are asking for proof that Obama was a good student…Mmm, the guy was the president of the Harvard Law Review….In other words, he was recognized as his peers as being pretty darned smart.
8:24 pm on April 30th, 2011 62
By the way, the whole thing seems silly to me. The first Prime Minister of Canada was born in Scotland and so was the second. The fifth was born in England. The second British Prime Minister under George V was born in Canada.
8:26 pm on April 30th, 2011 63
Yes, relevant to people are simply too intellectually lazy to read (and too damned stupid to understand) what he wrote as a student in the Harvard Law Review, most of which can probably be found online.
8:49 pm on April 30th, 2011 64
I apologize for misreading or misunderstanding your comments. No excuses offered. I was too quick to judge.
9:51 pm on April 30th, 2011 65
A prime example of US politics: LBJ was once rumored to have told his campaign manager to spread word that the opponent in a campaign against him foicked sheep. The response was, "That's crazy, no one will believe that." To which LBJ is rumored to have replied, "Just make him deny it."
9:54 pm on April 30th, 2011 66
Canada didn't declare Independence from the Crown nor did it fight a revolution to earn said independence. There's no difference? Really?
10:30 pm on April 30th, 2011 67
GI Korea, I'm glad you find the Daily Howler helpful. In the two years I've been commenting, that's the only time anbody accepted my advice about what they should read.
10:33 pm on April 30th, 2011 68
You don't like Youtube? I love Youtube. That's where I go whnever I want to take a stroll down Memory Lane.
7:29 am on May 6th, 2011 69
Smoke and mirrors? Obama knew when he was going to kill UBL -everyone understands that. Hopefully no one thinks Obama just woke up one morning and said “I think I’ll kill UBL today”. That took months of planning and BHO knew the date well in advance. I find the proximity of the release no coincidence, but a planned smoke and mirror show. Again America is hoodwinked…. Suckers
2:59 pm on May 6th, 2011 70
If everybody helped at least one other person every day (kind words and deeds go a long way), wouldn’t the world be a nicer place?
3:37 pm on May 6th, 2011 71
Yes, setnaffa. It would.
3:39 pm on May 6th, 2011 72
***Roads are subsidized, so is education, libraries, and healthcare (to some extent). Face it, the United States is far more socialiist than you are willing to admit.***
Where do those subsidies come from? From loans the US Government gets from the Federal Reserve bank, but then are guaranteed by the US taxpayers whether they like it or not. Our government acts socialist, yes, but it is not supposed to operate in that manner. To say that “subsidies” equal socialism is inaccurate.
4:01 pm on May 6th, 2011 73
Teadrinker – “By the way, the whole thing seems silly to me. The first Prime Minister of Canada was born in Scotland and so was the second. The fifth was born in England. The second British Prime Minister under George V was born in Canada.”
We all know the egomania of the British and the “monarchy” knows no bounds, but this raises an good point. What is the presidential birth requirement all about? Is it loyalty? I don’t see much loyalty in any U.S. politician, other than the self-centered type.
6:23 pm on May 6th, 2011 74
The outstanding website for news criticism is, of course, the Daily Howler. Bob Somerby often condemns Fox News, no surprise, but he also looks closely at the mainstreamers, such as the New York Times and the Washington Post. Nor does he spare the ‘liberals’ of MS-NBC and ‘progressive’ blogs. Peruse the Howler’s archives, and visit it daily. GI Korea likes the Howler; there can be no higher endorsement.
Somerby occasionally takes a close look at Jim Lehrer. Here are two old examples:
17 May 2004
2 March 2005
10:47 pm on May 6th, 2011 75
Teadrinker #62, The controversy over President Obama’s birthplace is not just a question of feeling good about someone being born in the US. The US Constitution in Article 2, section 1 states: “No person except a natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United States at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution shall be eligible to the Office of President; neither shall any Person be eligible to that Office who shall not have attained the Age of thirty-five Years and been fourteen Years a Resident within the United States.” The reason for this part of the constitution was the concern if someone became President who was born in another country is that there might be divided loyalties. As I have said previously I have believed that President Obama was born in the US as the announcements in the local Hawaiian newspapers stated. The release of the long form bc should remove any lingering doubts. With OBL being given his just desserts hopefully this bc thing will get off the radar permanently.
2:28 am on May 14th, 2011 76
Funny contribution
Obama-like birth certificate generator reported here:
http://www.funnydocs.com/index.html
3:05 am on May 14th, 2011 77
Let it go man, cause, like, it’s gone.
12:34 pm on May 15th, 2011 78
The Obama administration is using the prospect of retaliation for Osama bin Laden’s death as cover for eliminating Grandma Sarah “I saw him born in Kenya” Obama.
Seriously, though, given that she is not an actual blood relative, as well as the fact that she is a foreign national who lives in another country, does the woman warrant any kind of protection from the US side? If not Secret Service then something else? How far (i.e., to what level of family relation) does Secret Service protection go?
12:59 am on May 16th, 2011 79
Kushibo #78, I would hope that the US Government paid for by the US taxpayers are NOT paying to provide security for a citizen of a foreign country even if that citizen is the grandmother of the US president. That security is the responsibility of the Kenyan government. I’m sure that ALL of the US presidents including the current one (remember he is half White) have relatives in Europe. Is the secret service going to provide a security detail for a fifth cousin twice removed in England somewhere? I think President Obama did a GREAT JOB in ordering the elimination of OBL. Since we killed OBL I’m sure we could do the same thing to the leaders of the African Al Quida. I have a suggested motto for the US Navy SEALS Team 6: “When in doubt, take them out!”
1:09 am on May 16th, 2011 80
What about Obama’s illegal alien welfare queen aunt?
She already gets free housing, free medical, free cash… might as well give her some free security… they can help her move her rent-to-own furniture around and carry some of that free food back from the supermarket.
3:43 am on May 16th, 2011 81
look,it’s funny!!!
http://www.funnydocs.com/
4:47 am on May 16th, 2011 82
Kenyans had more to celebrate at the death of OBL than most. Of the 212 people killed when Al Qeada bombed the U.S. embassy in Nairobi in 1998, only 12 were American. There were about 4,000 wounded.
While Kenya has been on the front line of fighting Somali Islamists, Al Shabab, they also take in a lot of Somali refugees and their situation is becoming more complicated.
We may already have security forces over there to assist them, but they’re not likely Secret Service.
They could also be a base for fighting Somali piracy.
12:52 pm on May 16th, 2011 83
Tom Langley wrote:
While I’m not siding one way or the other, I think you’re making an apples-and-oranges comparison. For starters, this is his (step-)grandmother, not a “fifth cousin twice removed.” Second, she has received actual threats as a direct result of her relationship with the president, something not covered in your hypothetical fifth-cousin scenario.
No offense, but I don’t care much for arguments where a possibly legitimate point is unfairly dismissed by someone making absurdly inaccurate equivalencies with something that is far easier to argue against. No offense.
1:20 pm on May 16th, 2011 84
ChickenHead wrote:
Zeituni Onyango is not an illegal, though she was after she failed to self-deport when her request for political asylum was denied.
What makes her a welfare queen? Just getting welfare payments at all? I thought a welfare queen was someone living a somewhat luxurious life while collecting welfare, which does not appear to be the case for her, or for most welfare recipients for that matter. The fact that she was living in a homeless shelter for two years tends to make me think she wasn’t a welfare queen.
(Truth be told, though, she does look like a queen of some kind.)
Ever been on welfare, CH? How luxurious was your lifestyle?
This “welfare queen illegal alien” thing sounds like something that’s just being repeated from when this story was being whipped up as an “October surprise” to torpedo Obama’s candidacy in November 2008.
I had already submitted my ballot by then, but if I hadn’t, I would have changed my vote and instead voted for Obama, just on principle.
3:12 pm on May 16th, 2011 85
Foodstamp fraud widespread in Texas. Or perhaps I should mention that Texas foodstamp cards were used in Hawaii and many other places…
http://www.khou.com/news/-Texas-investigates-possible-food-stamp-program-abuse-120936759.html
There is a lot more fraud than Kushibo wants to admit…
3:35 pm on May 16th, 2011 86
Kushibo #84, As you stated Zeituni Onyango became an illegal alien when she refused to self-deport when her request for political asylum was denied. If she has been denied political asylum then what the foxtrot is she still doing here in the US? If a threat has been made against her in Kenya then it is Kenya’s responsibility to protect her since she is one of their citizens IN KENYA. I’m sure that Kenya has the equivalent of the US secret service to protect its leaders, either let that agency or whatever law enforcement agency is responsible do its job. If a specific threat WAS made against a relative of a US president in Europe or anywhere else it is the responsibility of the concerned government to protect its citizen, it is NOT the job of the US government. If Ms Onyango has made a legal appeal to hold up deportation then fine, let the legal process work it out. But if in the end she loses her appeals then treat her just like any other foreigner who overstayed their visa & SEND THEM HOME! I have one more question, how is it human possible for a person who is in our nation ILLEGALLY able to get welfare & public housing????? These politicians should be thrown out of office.
4:16 pm on May 16th, 2011 87
You do realize that a year ago her request was approved, right? She has been completely legal for at least a year, and prior to that, while the second round of legal stuff was working it’s way through, she was arguably legally residing (as a pending case) even longer.
There was a period, though, where she was completely illegal because her request had been denied and she didn’t yet have anything working through the system as an appeal or whatever. That was, I believe, her status right before the election in 2008, when this “suddenly” was presented to the supposedly liberal news media.
I think you’re confusing two different people. The one with the al Qaeda threat is Sarah Obama, the wife of Obama’s biological grandfather, who is in Kenya. She is not nor never was an illegal resident of the United States.
ChickenHead threw in the formerly illegal resident half-aunt, even though there has been no news of her being threatened by al Qaeda.
4:20 pm on May 16th, 2011 88
More than I want to admit? I’m simply differentiating between people on welfare in general and those specific people who are abusing it. ChickenHead specifically referred to Obama’s half-aunt as a “welfare queen,” and I asked what that was about.
Have any of you ever been on welfare? I think it’s a lot harder for people to abuse it than you may think, and the quality of life it affords for able-bodied individuals maybe not as great as you think.
But of course there’s abuse, and I never denied there was. There’s abuse of all kinds of welfare, corporate, individual, etc. That doesn’t mean that either one should be gotten rid of based on a small percentage of cases that themselves can be remedied. (An absence of a safety net is bad for all, including those who don’t need it presently, while corporate welfare includes some favorable incentives that are needed sometimes to grease the economic wheels. The problem is when corrupt money politics ends up directing where that “corporate welfare” goes.)
6:57 pm on May 16th, 2011 89
O.K., Kushibo…
…she is not a necessarily a “welfare queen”.
She was a welfare abuser and a welfare fraudster… who blamed the system for giving her benefits she never asked for.
Now she is simply another non-productive foreigner with her hand out… happy that she is living a much better life for free in America than she could with a 12 hour workday back in her own third world shythole.
Regardless of how you wish to rationalize it, she came to America as a citizen of a foreign country. She over-stayed her visa… making her an illegal alien.
And, as an illegal alien, she got free surgery, at the expense of citizens who pay far too much for healthcare… got free housing, while citizens are losing their homes… got free food, while citizens pay for theirs… and got cash every month, while citizens who have paid a lifetime of taxes go to work every day.
And, while, after previous denials, her “claim of asylum” has now been mysteriously approved, making her a legal resident after years avoiding deportation while cheating the system out of benefits, she still continues to get all of these free things while citizens who have worked hard and played by the rules get nothing but the bill.
Now you can try to dilute this injustice with references to corporate welfare or corrupt money politics… but the reality is America has a duty to its citizens over foreign criminals looking to defraud the United States.
And for every benefit given to these opportunists, it is one less benefit that can be given to an American who needs it just as badly.
Her situation is a great big turd, Kushibo. Any attempt you make to polish it simply makes you look like an ignorant part of the problem rather than part of an intelligent, compassionate, and fair solution.
7:43 pm on May 16th, 2011 90
ChickenHead, what am I rationalizing?
She was irrelevant to anything, and when she was brought up, she was mischaracterized. It’s your discussion, not mine. I’m not rationalizing a thing.
10:48 am on September 17th, 2011 91
Here is something to keep an eye on.
The claim is that…
Obama’s Social Security Number was run through E-Verify and…
…it came back flagged as potentially fraudulent.
http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=345181
Draw your own conclusions.
Every one of Obama’s relatives have been exposed as liars, criminals, freeloaders, skanks… etc. Few apples ever fall far from such a thick tree.
So many things about Obama are obscured and murky. This is just another one.
11:19 am on September 17th, 2011 92
Yeah, I saw that ChickenHead. I agree. But that is not the conversation for now. He will not be President forever. Thank whatever God you believe in.
11:51 am on September 17th, 2011 93
What is Obama’s Social Security number that they ran through E-Verify?
12:57 pm on September 17th, 2011 94
Kushibo,
You either live in a tree or you are just being cute.
Obama’s SSN is the most famous one on the Net.
042-68-4425
This can be verified by looking up his publicly available Selective Service record.
Here is a screenshot.
http://i10.photobucket.com/albums/a128/keymanjim/obamassr.jpg
Here is a link to do it yourself.
https://www.sss.gov/RegVer/wfVerification.aspx
It is curious to note that 042 was issued to SSN applicants with a Connecticut zipcode in their return address.
The SSN just before Obama’s was issued to a Connecticut resident named Thomas Wood on March 28, 1977.
Here is his application from the SSA.
http://colonel6.files.wordpress.com/2011/04/thomas-wood.jpg
In fairness, the explanation for this is the SSA made a mistake with the Honolulu, Hawaii zip code of 96814 and the Danbury, Connecticut zip code of 06814 and issued the wrong prefix to Obama.
I guess I could buy that in a pinch.
This all does indicate that Obama was working under the table at his first job, though.
Of course, trusting anything on WND without a bit of verification is a recipe for embarrassment… but it does seem that the SSN is unquestionably Obama’s… and, if it was in fact run through E-Verify and it was flagged, Obama would not be eligible to get a job in the United States…
…although, technically, he is currently in the right… as he isn’t doing his job now.
1:22 pm on September 17th, 2011 95
ChickenHead wrote:
Not being cute or arboreal. I asked what number they ran through, since it wasn’t in the article. A fair question to fact check the would-be fact checkers.
The WND article you submitted says Obama “flunks the government’s own test to determine whether someone can legally work in the U.S.”
“Flunks”? “Flagged as potentially fraudulent”? I get a message that says…
… but this is different from “flunking” or being “flagged as potentially fraudulent.”
Below is what you get when there is no record:
That’s what I got when I used my own data with the numbers off.
Obviously, they’re not revealing Obama’s information on there, but the question is if they do this for other high-profile political figures as well (what’s Clinton’s or Bush43′s SSN?).
(How did the guy you linked get this far? That’s what’s supposed to pop up, but I got the aforementioned “technical difficulties.”)
That actually makes an incredible amount of sense.
So did I. Worked in a mom-and-pop Chinese/American restaurant that served hamburgers, delicious fried rice, and homemade shakes.
1:39 pm on September 17th, 2011 96
The Selective Service look-up is not E-Verify.
It only allows you to confirm to your satisfaction that the SSN does belong to Obama.
You can run Obama’s SSN through E-Verify by using publicly available information.
http://www.uscis.gov/portal/site/uscis/menuitem.eb1d4c2a3e5b9ac89243c6a7543f6d1a/?vgnextoid=c4147cd67450d210VgnVCM100000082ca60aRCRD&vgnextchannel=c4147cd67450d210VgnVCM100000082ca60aRCRD
Good luck!
1:42 pm on September 17th, 2011 97
Argh… I just woke up and maybe I’m too groggy to deal with this properly, but I went through the E-Verify Self Check like Linda Jordan did in the article…
… but I question how she would have been able to have the detailed information (e.g., who is servicing your student loans, past obscure phone numbers, etc.) readily available to fake being Obama. Not to mention that her IP address would be a giveaway that she’s not him (and thus, arguably, committing fraud).
1:54 pm on September 17th, 2011 98
When I did a fake identity, I got the following at E-Verify Self Check:
An earlier attempt, with a fake identity that included more fakery but a real address, yielded this:
I think either of these results could easily result from someone trying to pretend to be the President in order to do a fact check, thus the conclusion that Obama’s a fraud is a bit premature.
1:56 pm on September 17th, 2011 99
(I wrote #97 and #98 before I saw CH’s #96. And I did the Selective Service lookup because he linked to a Selective Service lookup and I was trying to confirm whether I’d get the same results.)
2:28 am on September 18th, 2011 100
I hope the secret service doesn’t pay you guys a visit for checking on President Obama’s SSN.