WTP takes on Obama

[Nikki]

Bob is either terminally stupid or an inveterate liar.

On his WTP page concerning his docudrama, he posted a slice of a Hawaii certificate of live birth which allows for the specification of a foreign country. He then claims that this data entry box allows the registration of a birth which took place in a foreign country.

He completely ignores that that data entry box contains information RELATED TO THE MOTHER, not to the child.

Also, he somehow glosses over the fact that the Indonesian school registration form (which he relies on to prove Indonesian citizenship) specifies the place of birth as HAWAII.

He really should have stuck with the artificially-sweetened KoolAid. All that sugar seems to have rotted his brain.

[fortinbras]

Appropos of nothing in particular, this straining at gnats -- more precisely, straining at imaginary gnats -- about Obama reminds me of a dirty campaign trick that was used by the Bush people in 2000, against Gore-Lieberman.

Joe Lieberman was then a Good Guy, and much was made of his being not merely the first Jew on a major party ticket but an Orthodox Jew. And we were told how, when he arrived in Washington, he was so scrupulous that Friday nights and Saturdays he wouldn't turn the lights on but had someone else do it. I wasn't so sure that I wanted someone who was that much Jewish to be VP - even Israel hasn't had an Orthodox PM yet. (By the way, Lieberman made a very serious slip in his religious observance when he not only campaigned but ate on the Fast of Tisha B'Av in, IIRC, late August 2000.)

Anyway, the Republicans wanted a way to make an issue of his being not-a-Christian but were hardpressed to look PC about it. So they got together a bunch of Orthodox eccentrics - nominally rabbis (one was selling rabbinical ordinations by mail and another had bought his ordination by mail!) but without congregations - to have a jerry-rigged Bet Din to excommunicate Lieberman (for, among other things, not voting to impeach Clinton). This ad hoc tribunal met in NYC in a rented hotel meeting room because not a single one of the members actually had any position of authority in a synagogue. Naturally they didn't have any jurisdiction over Joe Lieberman, who came from Connecticut and was (and still is) a member in good standing in a very respectable Orthodox synagogue in Conn. and another one in DC. (This pretended excommunication was NOT mentioned in the Brooklyn-based weekly, The Jewish Press, which was Very Orthodox and also supporting Bush notwithstanding Lieberman -- that The Jewish Press didn't report it under those circumstances is a strong indication of how phony it was.) But the Bush people trumpeted the word of this make-believe excommunication and it was repeated far and wide by people who could be counted not to vote for a Jew as their pretended reason not to vote for Lieberman -- ostensibly because he wasn't Jewish enough to please those cranks. This was an echo of the stunt Bush's daddy had used on Michael Dukakis, who had been denied communion in his Greek Orthodox Church because of his marriage to Kitty, who was Jewish; again, the issue was Dukakis was not a church member in good standing as a roundabout way of making an issue of the fact that his wife is Jewish.

[notorial dissent]

Bob is either terminally stupid or an inveterate liar.

I really don’t see that it has to be “or” as opposed to “and”, as that so much better covers the situation.

[ErsatzAnatchist]

If baby Obama had been born in Kenya, or Indonesia, or the South Pole, the only way he'd be able to enter the US with Mama Obama (I just can't resist) is with a passport that included him (either for him alone, or - back in those days but not since about 1970 - with a parent or sibling). You'd think someone would have tumbled to that fact by now, and come up with a foreign passport that named him.

I asked a friend who had been born in Germany whether a passport was needed in his case, and he said, "No." One difference might be that he was born to military parents. Not sure.

Real big difference, if you are serving military, you are always on US soil and don’t need a passport unless traveling on your own.

I was born in Germany as a result of my father being stationed there while on active duty in the military (although for some reason I think my father was in Southeast Asia at the actual time of my birth dealing with a little dispute about the spread of communism). I have two birth certificates, one in English issued by the consulate, and one in German, issued by some governmental entity in Germany. I also have a passport with a baby picture in it, so I assume I needed it to travel (and perhaps return to the US). I was born in 1967.

[fortinbras]

The Constitutional provision about the President must be "a natural-born citizen" has had (until this year) virtually no mention in court cases, and only a few mentions in learned journals.

The "natural-born citizen" requirement won the title in What is the Constitution's Worst Provision?, by Robert Post [Prof at Univ of Calif Law School], 12 Constitutional Commentary (publ. by Univ of Minn L.S.) 191 (1995). It has also been criticized in The Presidential Qualification Clause: The Need to Eliminate the Natural Born Citizen Requirement, by Judge M. Medina, 12 Okl. City Univ. Law Rev. 253 (1987), and in Who Can be President of the United States: The Unresolved Enigma, by Charles Gordon, 28 Md.L.Rev. 1 (1968), and in Unnatural Born Citizens and Acting Presidents, by James C. Ho, 17 Const.Comment. 575 (2000)

This provision also got a workout forty years ago, when Michigan Governor George Romney (father of this year's candidate, Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney) was a contender for the Republican nomination; George Romney had been born to two US citizens residing in a Mormon missionary colony in Mexico and did not enter the US until age 5. His successful rival for the nomination was Sen. Barry Goldwater, who had been born in Arizona Territory before it became a state. The general conclusion was that both met the natural born citizen qualification.

Some of the people agitating about Obama's birth are terribly fastidious about that one provision but are quite willing to ignore other Constitutional provisions completely -- such as the 16th Amendment.

[Dr. Caligari]

This provision also got a workout forty years ago, when Michigan Governor George Romney (father of this year's candidate, Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney) was a contender for the Republican nomination; George Romney had been born to two US citizens residing in a Mormon missionary colony in Mexico and did not enter the US until age 5. His successful rival for the nomination was Sen. Barry Goldwater, who had been born in Arizona Territory before it became a state. The general conclusion was that both met the natural born citizen qualification.

Quibble: Romney ran in 1968, losing the nomination to Richard Nixon; Goldwater ran in 1964 (his rival for the nomination was Nelson Rockefeller).

[fortinbras]

Quibble: Romney ran in 1968, losing the nomination to Richard Nixon; Goldwater ran in 1964 (his rival for the nomination was Nelson Rockefeller).

Absolutely right. I made a really dumb mistake.

[notorial dissent]

I was born in Germany as a result of my father being stationed there while on active duty in the military (although for some reason I think my father was in Southeast Asia at the actual time of my birth dealing with a little dispute about the spread of communism). I have two birth certificates, one in English issued by the consulate, and one in German, issued by some governmental entity in Germany. I also have a passport with a baby picture in it, so I assume I needed it to travel (and perhaps return to the US). I was born in 1967.

Military as a rule do not need a passport unless they are traveling as civilians. Military dependents, unless traveling by military transport do need a passport when out and about, and would have one, and babies and children were usually included on the mother’s passport, sometimes there were individual passports issued if there was a possibility that they wouldn’t all be together all the time.

[triumphguy2]

When I was an exchange officer with the French Navy, I was required to carry a passport which said ‘The bearer of this passport is traveling on the official business of the United States of America.’ I used it even when vacationing as a civilian after the assignment was over. The only time anyone questioned it was when I was returning to the US at Kennedy Airport. I had picked up the French ship in Norfolk, VA and returned to France aboard the ship. Obviously when a French Navy ship returns to its home port in France, nobody comes aboard to stamp the crew’s passports. So when I went through customs at Kennedy upon my return, I had no stamp for having left USA and no stamp for having arrived in France. I also had no customs stamps on any of the camera equipment I had carried aboard in Norfolk. The guy seemed to be too bored or too tired to try and figure out how I could come back without ever having left; he even let the camera pass without making me pay a duty.


Patrick Cherry
Ojai, CA

[Doktor Avalanche]

Military as a rule do not need a passport unless they are traveling as civilians. Military dependents, unless traveling by military transport do need a passport when out and about, and would have one, and babies and children were usually included on the mother’s passport, sometimes there were individual passports issued if there was a possibility that they wouldn’t all be together all the time.

This is true.

All I need to get into South Korea (or any other country I'm there on orders for) is a copy of my orders and a military ID. The same holds true for returning to the United States.

And with that I pretty much breeze through customs.

[fortinbras]

World Net Daily website is now cranked up that Hawaiian hospitals won't talk to them about where/when Obama was born:
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/index.php? ... eId=100590

Overlooked are the facts that, some 48 years after the President's birth, nobody on the current staff of the hospital will have a personal memory of that event. All the hospital's records from the 1960s would be in storage somewhere and it would take some considerable effort to look up this item -- although I am sure that a major urban hospital has plenty of people with nothing better to do than hunt up 48-year-old records just to gratify the curiosity of a disreputable internet gossip sheet. But the state and federal laws now in place - and put in place well before Obama became a candidate - prevent the hospital from disclosing to third persons with no recognizable interest other than curiosity and conspiracy theories ANY facts about any patient, including even the fact that a particular person was a patient.

[grixit]

I wonder how many paytriots could offer substantiation from their own places of birth. I suspect most of them rely on their government issued slave registration, er, birth certificate.

[LPC]

But the state and federal laws now in place - and put in place well before Obama became a candidate -

So you're saying it was a VERY well-orchestrated conspiracy/cover-up?

[LPC]

World Net Daily website is now cranked up that Hawaiian hospitals won't talk to them about where/when Obama was born:
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/index.php? ... eId=100590

One part of the WND story interested me:

A Honolulu Star Bulletin column Saturday had quoted a state Department of Health spokeswoman as saying the state's current certification of live birth is recognized "as an official birth certificate meeting all federal and other requirements."

But the website of the Department of Hawaiian Home Lands states clearly the certification of live birth touted by Obama's campaign, White House press secretary Robert Gibbs and a host of other Obama defenders is not acceptable as a form of identification to qualify under this program.

Of course, that's not what the DHHL website says at all.

First off, the requirements of the DHHL have nothing to do with issues of "identification." In order to qualify for the DHHL program, applicants must prove that they are at least 50% native Hawaiian, which means that the issue is not about date or place of birth, but about ancestry and the ancestry of parents and grandparents.

The web page also never says that the computer-generated certification of birth is "not acceptable," but suggests that it is not preferred:

In order to process your application, DHHL utilizes information that is found only on the original Certificate of Live Birth, which is either black or green. This is a more complete record of your birth than the Certification of Live Birth (a computer-generated printout). Submitting the original Certificate of Live Birth will save you time and money since the computer-generated Certification requires additional verification by DHHL.

[fortinbras]

World Net Daily wrote:

..... But the website of the Department of Hawaiian Home Lands states clearly the certification of live birth touted by Obama's campaign, White House press secretary Robert Gibbs and a host of other Obama defenders is not acceptable as a form of identification to qualify under this [benefits for people of aboriginal Hawaiian ancestry] program.

I worked, a million years ago, in the US Passport Office in NYC, so I know a little about this. A birth certificate (whatever fancy name you want to call it, the document issued by the govt health/vital records office) is proof of citizenship, age, location of birth. At the Passport Office, the birth certificate pretty much settled that the baby named on the certificate was a citizen.

But the birth certificate doesn't prove to me that the individual handing me the birth certificate is the same person named on it. I needed something more for identification, something considerably more recent, such as driver's license, as evidence that this person is the same one named on the birth certificate.

Gee, I hope this explanation clarifies things.

[LPC]

I worked, a million years ago, in the US Passport Office in NYC, so I know a little about this. A birth certificate (whatever fancy name you want to call it, the document issued by the govt health/vital records office) is proof of citizenship, age, location of birth. At the Passport Office, the birth certificate pretty much settled that the baby named on the certificate was a citizen.

But the birth certificate doesn't prove to me that the individual handing me the birth certificate is the same person named on it. I needed something more for identification, something considerably more recent, such as driver's license, as evidence that this person is the same one named on the birth certificate.

That's the way the Social Security Administration works now also. In order to get an SSN, it's not enough to prove that a person by that name exists, but you also have to prove that you are that person.

The SSA therefore demands two different kinds of proof: Proof of birth/citizenship (which can be a birth certificate) and proof of identity, which are usually things that only the named person would have, such as a wrist band from the hospital (in the case of a recent birth), a baptismal certificate, or something similar.

In fact, I think that most governmental agencies have pretty much agreed that a birth certificate is really not any kind of "proof of identity" at all.

[fortinbras]

A couple of months ago, Wiley Drake, who had been Alan Keyes's VP running mate, filed a birth certificate lawsuit.
This month he was leading a congregation in praying for Obama to die!

http://crooksandliars.com/john-amato/pa ... ath-im-not

also
http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/2009 ... strike.php

What next?! What if someone decides for himself that he is God's instrument in answering that prayer?!

[fortinbras]

This week the OC Weekly, published in Orange County, California, carries an article on the (probably) worst of the "birthers" (or "birfers" if you really dislike them), including her strained relations with other birfers, a debunking of some of her "facts", and links to some useful websites.
http://www.ocweekly.com/content/printVersion/456300

[grixit]

Yikes! And i thought Orange County was nuts when i left in 94.

[fortinbras]

You want nuttiness??

Here's a demonstration of the wholesome patriotic intelligence found in the birfer camp:

http://supportbordercontrols.blogspot.c ... other.html

and, as a demonstration of birfer good taste, they're selling rolls of toilet paper printed with copies of Obama's official Hawaiian birth certificate:
http://ofbyfor.us.com/page17/page17.html

I couldn't make this stuff up.